Some of your questions have easy answers. Some are difficult. Others lead to places you don't expect. We tackle all kinds of questions with our feature OKI Wanna Know. This time, we get back on the highway with WVXU's Bill Rinehart.
Cincinnati drivers spent about 50 hours last year going to work, coming home or stuck in between. So, it's no surprise you're noticing or wondering about things along your commute.
Last month, Kathleen Fuller from the Ohio Department of Transportation came in to answer a truckload of your questions. And now, we pick up where we left off.
What's the little house on I-75?
Susan Carlson of Wyoming is curious about a little house on the interstate. It's on I-75 at the Paddock exit.
"Well it looks like sort of a cute little house. It's got some landscaping around it. It's cinderblock. It's got a roof like a regular little house," Carlson says. "And I see that they're putting all sorts of mechanisms in around the house. Surely no one's living in it."
No one is living in it, and don't call me Shirley.
Those mechanisms Carlson mentions are the key.
"That is our little house. It's actually not a house. It's a pump station."
Kathleen Fuller says it's just one phase of the Mill Creek Expressway widening project.
"We have Phase 8, which is the railroad bridge replacement project. We're doing railroad bridges over the Lateral, over 75, and then a couple of the side streets off to the west of 75," she says. "We're also doing this pump station and the CSO — combined sewer overflow station."
Essentially, during heavy rains the pumps will keep the nearby interstate from flooding. The project should be done by the fall of 2028.
And that random retaining wall?
That construction revealed what appeared to be a stone foundation nearby.
A listener named Greg from the Fairfield area noticed it as ODOT cleared away trees for the widening project, and he's curious about it.
The land just to the east of I-75 before the Paddock exit is an office park today. But, from 1860 to the 1980s, it was the site of the Longview State Hospital, a large psychiatric facility. And what is the interstate highway now was once the old bed of the Miami and Erie Canal.
That's what was there. Today, all that remains is this retaining wall, and Fuller says that's about all it is.
"There are a couple of spots where there are some retaining walls through there. It's outside of the right of way, and it's not a part of the project," she says. "You're noticing it because of all the brush clearing and the tree clearing."
Wait, where are we?
Nancy Van Brunt of College Hill says she listens to the news and traffic reports just about every day.
"And I hear about the people talking about how there's an 'incident on I-275 east, or I-275 west' and I can't tell where they're really talking about because the road is a circle."
For instance, a wreck is often described as eastbound 275 between Eastgate and Milford as you're heading north. Or a wreck that's between Milford and Eastgate as you're heading south is described as westbound.
Admittedly, as someone who reports on traffic on the air, I'm part of the problem.
Kathleen Fuller says she knows it's confusing.
"If I am on 75 north, and I want to depart 275, the Springdale area, what would you say to motorists? Would you tell them to go east or west, or would you tell them to go north or south?" she says. "Now, if you are say, at Five Mile Road, you then become more north-south. It just depends where you are at that point."
Fuller says if it helps, remember that everything on I-275 is relative to I-75.
Spurs, bypasses and connectors, oh my!
Which leads to a question of mine: Why is the highway circling the area called I-275, and not I-271? Or I-274?
Fuller says the way interstates are numbered is a whole thing. To start, north-south highways are odd numbered, while east-west highways are even.
There's a couple of exceptions: I-71, and US 62, which travel from southwest to northeast.
She says the basic interstate highway gets two numbers, like I-75. Loops, bypasses, spurs and connectors get three numbers, like 471, or 275.
"A three digit number would represent some sort of a loop, bypass, spur or connector," she says. "If it's an even number at the start, that first number, then it is considered a loop or a bypass. If it's an odd number, it's considered a spur or a connector."
I-275 was built before similar bypasses in Toledo and Dayton, so it got the 200 designation. Toledo was next, so it has I-475, and Dayton's I-675 was built last.
But why is I-275 associated with I-75? "More than likely the reason we would designate that — rather than 271 — there would be a couple of reasons," she says. "One, is that 75 was fully constructed out as an interstate, prior to 71. And there was 271 in the Cleveland area, so it's possible they'd already started some work there."
Fuller says another reason is that of Cincinnati's three interstates, I-75 is the biggest. I-71 is 345 miles between Columbus and Louisville. I-74, from Davenport, Iowa, to Cincinnati, is 541 miles long. I-75, between Miami and the Canadian border, is nearly 1,800 miles long.
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