Ohio Department of Transportation officials said the work on U.S. 33 and Route 161/Post Road is coming along but residents can expect construction until the end of 2024 with cleanup into 2025. Officials said the next step in the process is to route U.S. 33 traffic onto the newly constructed bridge sections on the east and west sides of the roadway.
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Several large-scale Union County road projects are underway and state officials said more would be coming.
Tony Turowski, the deputy director of the Ohio Department of Transportation’s district six told the county commissioners Wednesday that projects are coming along but residents will continue to see construction well into 2025.
He said a hot topic for residents is probably the Industrial Parkway and U.S. 42 intersection, which Turowski said is still in the right-of-way acquisition phase.
“We do need to buy land from different parcels that front the intersection so that’s going to take about 18 months to work through that process and negotiate with the land owners,” he said. “Once that’s complete, we’ll move to the construction phase. That’s probably going to be about a year and a half project.”
He said the project will run that long both because ODOT plans to keep traffic moving during construction and the project scope is so large.
Work will include adding turn lanes to both intersecting roads as well as widening U.S. 42 to five lanes between Industrial Parkway and U.S. 33. That will then continue beyond to Watkins-California Road to the northeast.
Turowski said getting the project moving is a definite priority for ODOT.
Another major project is the area of U.S. 33, Post Road/Route 161 in the southeastern part of the county. Turowski said that project is wrapping up its second year of construction.
“(Crews) have built a new bridge over Post Road/161,” he said. “What you’ll see next is they’ll actually move U.S. 33 to where the new bridge is, to the outside, and they’ll demolish the original bridge.”
After that, crews will finish the work adding additional lanes to the road under the bridge.
Work has been done to Hyland-Croy, Eiterman and other side roads and will continue through the spring of 2024 but much of the traffic changes should remain the same for the rest of this year, Turowski said.
Money for the project came from a variety of places including ODOT, Union County, City of Dublin and the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission totaling nearly $50 million.
Turowski said the collaboration likely helped get the project moving.
“ODOT’s funding mechanisms or the programs to get this money out there prioritizes where there is local involvement,” he said. “So, that leadership from the county, from Dublin, to put that money forward and be that seed money…can be a difference-maker.”
The project, at least in terms of how it impacts traffic, will wrap by the end of 2024 but Turowski said there will likely be cleanup efforts going into 2025.
A project close to finishing is the reconstruction of Route 739, which included removing asphalt, grinding the road down, mixing in cement or other binders to make it strong and repaving it. The process acts as a longer term, alternative solution to patching and is a fairly new process for ODOT but the department has had success on other, small county roads across the state. He said work should be done by the end of next week.
Future projects include work widening U.S 42 near the Delaware County line and a patching project on U.S. 33 in Marysville that will involve taking the road down to one lane but neither project will start until 2024 and 2025.
“We’re going to try and time it up with the Honda shutdown if we can. Whatever cars can be taken off the road will make it less of an inconvenience,” Turowski said.
He said the U.S. 33 project was a pivot from a project that went out to bid but only had one bidder and that number came in at more than $3 million over that number. He said more information will be available in the coming months.