Our feature OKI Wanna Know is a chance for you to ask the questions that others maybe don't think to ask. This week, a look at the area's roads, with WVXU's Bill Rinehart.
If there's one topic that's the most popular in this collection of questions, it's transportation. Specifically, streets. Streets and highways. So this edition of OKI Wanna Know is all about roads.
Kevin Buckley of Kenwood has a question about the I-71 off-ramp to William Howard Taft.
"Why is it the exit does the thing that it does?" he wonders. "Because the exit for Martin Luther King gets off there, but the way the exit for Taft, it does this thing where it kind of goes up and then goes back down underneath the overpass. The design to me seems a little odd. I'm sure there's a deliberate reason why, I'm just curious as to what is the 'why?' "
Ohio Department of Transportation District 8 Public Information Officer Kathleen Fuller says there's a simple reason the off-ramp goes down.
"Because there has to be adequate clearance. And that's why you have this split, where one goes up high, and one goes down low, and goes underneath," she says. "So the clearance for that bridge is critical."
She says the reason the ramp goes up is a little more complicated. Both ramps, to Taft and to Martin Luther King Junior Drive, leave southbound I-71 at the same point. At about the Fredonia Avenue overpass, they split up. Fuller says splitting the ramp, and keeping the road to Taft level with I-71, would mean more work, more space, and probably more money.
"We'd then need to have a retaining wall along the ramp to William Howard Taft, and that results in shoulders on the ramp," she says. "And then we encroach on Whittier Street, which is located on top of that hill, and west of the ramps."
Why is I-75 constantly under construction?
Arlene Werts wants to know why I-75 through Dayton is always under construction. Over the last 35 years, she can't remember a time when there wasn't major construction on the highway through Dayton.
Mandi Dillon is the regional public information officer for ODOT. She says yes, it can seem like I-75 is always under construction in Dayton, but she assures us: that's not quite accurate.
"It's not always the same section of I-75. I-75 is a large interstate that runs through the state of Ohio. We have a lot of different sections along that interstate including entrances, exits, overpasses, different ramps, and things that are not always going to be under construction at the same time."
Dillon says many of the larger projects are done in phases because of how ODOT gets funding and when contractors are available.
"So we may end one phase, complete that and move on to the next. We had the I-75 modernization project several years ago in the downtown Dayton area, and it was broken into three different phases. So that project took place over several years, because we had a lot of different aspects to those different phases to make sure we got it right."
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Dillon says the interstate is like a house: Is it ever completely done?
"The roof, the walls, everything completely finished, everything working. Oftentimes it's not, because even when you have something fixed, something else sometimes breaks, or there's something else that's just getting old and needs replaced, and that's what happens with the interstate system."
Why does I-275 go into Indiana?
Howard Dettmer asks about I-275. Why was it built so far west into Indiana? Why not straight north from the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport to Harrison-Rybolt area?
There are a number of reasons, according to ODOT's Kathleen Fuller. Some are financial, some economical, and some political. Fuller says Indiana and Kentucky officials had talked for a while about building a bridge over the Ohio River.
"Indiana actually had established the Lawrenceburg Bridge Company to build this toll bridge. Then the feds come along with money for an interstate that would include a new bridge at some point."
Basically, why would Indiana pay to build a bridge if the federal government would construct one just up-river for the circle freeway?
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Overall, I-275 was built to shuttle some traffic away from the center of Cincinnati, to provide a thoroughfare to the airport, and to connect outlying communities.
"And I think that they wanted to incorporate Lawrenceburg into that outer belt, so not only the airport, but also Lawrenceburg, to get connectivity."
The public affairs officers for Indiana and Kentucky's transportation agencies confirm that. And Sidney Nierman with INDOT says having 275 reaching into Indiana provides an alternate route to and from downtown Cincinnati along U.S. 50.
