^ Im just saying. It would be far cheaper and save 2 decades in time until we get full funding back.

Is calling the shoulder a berm some Ohio thing I never got the memo about, like saying please when you mean excuse me?  As far as I've always known, a berm is the sloped grassy hillside, like on the right of the picture from DC. 

 

The trouble with trying to do something like that on I-75 is that the shoulders are already not wide enough as it is.  So to do such a thing would still require widening bridges, moving retaining walls, and regrading the...berms...on either side of the highway.  Using the right shoulder seems risky enough as it is, because you lose the acceleration and deceleration lanes at entrance and exit ramps.  If a highway has two full shoulders in each direction, as current standards require when there's more than two travel lanes each way, then using the left shoulder makes some sense because it's usually not interrupted by ramps.  None of this applies to I-75 which has incomplete and narrow right shoulders, no left shoulder to speak of for most of its length in Hamilton County, left exits, and other geometric issues.  Even I-71 has some issues with the buses using the left shoulder.  There's a pinch point southbound under I-275, and they kick the buses back onto the main travel lanes south of Kenwood because the shoulder gets just a bit narrower.  There's also a lack of left shoulders at the Norwood Lateral/Ridge interchange in spots.  There's also cases where the outside shoulder has a superelevation (banking) that's opposite the main travel lanes due to drainage concerns, like northbound I-71 between Smith and Williams.  Not all of these problems are insurmountable of course, but it only takes one immovable column in the way to really mess up the plan and make things start snowballing out of control. 

I meant more in general rather than in this specific situation.

Fair enough, but I'm not sure I'd necessarily call it un-progressive to implement hard shoulder running.  Shoulders do have a purpose after all, and while I'll be the first to decry just how out of control interstate highway standards have become, there certainly is a danger factor here.  I don't know how they're implemented in DC, whether it's simply by time or if there's other factors.  I think it would be prudent to only allow it if the highway is congested enough to run at a reduced speed.  I think 30 or 35 mph is the cutoff for the Metro buses on I-71.  If it's free-flowing over those speeds, then the shoulder should remain closed. 

 

Of course, all these measures simply enable the problem to worsen.  By increasing the capacity, whether through hard shoulder running, adding general purpose lanes, HOV/HOT lanes, etc., it's only further encouraging sprawl.  The money would be better spent elsewhere, on things we want people to do, like live more densely and in better neighborhoods, rather than on things we don't want them to do, like move farther out into Butler County or NKY. 

The much-maligned Lockland "canyon" is a full 30% wider than the Brent Spence Bridge decks (75 versus 50 feet), with the same number of lanes, so the lanes are actually quite wide.  But the walls seem to have the same effect as a tunnel, causing everyone to drift down to about 55mph instead of staying at 60 or 65.   

^ That's 50% wider.

 

Maybe we should "canyon" all of 75 to make it safer, with slower speeds. Better spent money than an extra lane.

^In addition to all of the things already mentioned, I-75 carries a very high percentage of heavy trucks, which introduces further complications.

 

The canyon concept facilitates cross-streets. A pair of one-way streets on either side of an expressway, such as FWW, with cross-streets over the expressway, is one of my favorite patterns for expressways. That pattern is common in Detroit. It works well for rivers, too, as long as the river or waterway is not too wide.

 

The irony of expressays is that they are safer at lower speeds. During the oil embargo of the 1970's, speed limts were reduced to 55mph with the intention of saving fuel. After the embargo, speed limits remained at 55 because it was found that it saved lives. The 55 mph speed limit was a federal rule; although the rule never became a law, the feds were able to enforce it by withholding funding from any state that did not follow the 55 mph rule. Eventually, state's rights prevailed.

 

I understand that the original design speed for most of I-75 was 75 mph, which incidentally a lot of people drive.

Well unless something is done with I-75 55 mph will be a rarity.

>That's 50% wider.

 

Duh.  My bad. 

 

Expressways probably average 30-40mph when they're in that stop-and-go rush hour pattern.  That's still much faster than taking Princeton Pike to Paddock or Reading as alternatives to I-75. 

 

People have this thought that as soon as there is a backup of any kind, the solution is more lanes, and those lanes should be free. If you listen to the overnight 700WLW Truckin' Bozo show, all these truckers, who obviously drive for a living, don't understand the basic concepts that don't even need to be mentioned on boards like this.  They spend all that time in the truck but have zero idea how gasoline taxes work.  For example, North Carolina is making moves to place tolls on I-95.  Their rationale is perfectly logical -- many travelers pass through the state without fueling due to the state's high gasoline tax.  They have determined that at least 25% of the traffic on I-95 never stops and never buys fuel in North Carolina.  Therefore 25% is not paying for the road's maintenance or planned expansion.  So a toll has been proposed to capture that lost revenue, and THE TRUCKERS FREAK OUT. 

 

 

^In addition to all of the things already mentioned, I-75 carries a very high percentage of heavy trucks, which introduces further complications.

 

The canyon concept facilitates cross-streets. A pair of one-way streets on either side of an expressway, such as FWW, with cross-streets over the expressway, is one of my favorite patterns for expressways. That pattern is common in Detroit. It works well for rivers, too, as long as the river or waterway is not too wide.

 

The irony of expressays is that they are safer at lower speeds. During the oil embargo of the 1970's, speed limts were reduced to 55mph with the intention of saving fuel. After the embargo, speed limits remained at 55 because it was found that it saved lives. The 55 mph speed limit was a federal rule; although the rule never became a law, the feds were able to enforce it by withholding funding from any state that did not follow the 55 mph rule. Eventually, state's rights prevailed.

 

I understand that the original design speed for most of I-75 was 75 mph, which incidentally a lot of people drive.

 

Why is that ironic? It seems it would be intuitive

The irony is that expressways are as safe as they are despite the high speeds.  There usually seems to be a mismatch between the design speed, which is usually about 80 mph, and the posted speed limit.  So that's why people usually go that fast.  Nevertheless, because it's designed for those speeds, has shoulders, etc., they're actually quite safe.  Even Columbia Parkway, which is a disaster as far as highway standards go (no shoulders to speak of, narrow lanes, blind hills, sharp turns, traffic signals, no median jersey barrier, and poor drainage) actually has better crash statistics than a lot of the city's surface streets.  Being limited access is probably the single biggest factor in the road's favor. 

 

The most dangerous roads, on the other hand, tend to be the rural 2-laners that you find all over the country with 55 mph speed limits.  They were never designed...at all, let alone for those kinds of speeds.  They have narrow lanes, lots of blind hills and curves, and of course being just one lane each way with a yellow line down the middle makes head-on collisions a problem.  What's interesting is that despite engineering the hell out of such roads, by adding shoulders, smoothing curves, trying to limit access as much as possible, putting in rumble strips, etc., the AA Highway in Kentucky is plagued with terrible accident rates.  There seems to be issues with overconfidence of drivers, and being miscued about how fast to go based on the design standards or other factors that influence perception.  I bet Columbia Parkway is as good as it is precisely because it's such a scary road that it forces people to be more attentive. 

Eh, the National Mandated Speed Limit (NMSL) only reduced gasoline consumption between .5% and 1% (USDOT Office of Driver Research), whereas officials boasted of 2.2% savings. Nikon had proposed 50 MPH SL for cars and 55 MPH for trucks and buses, a ban on gasoline sales on Sunday, a ban on "ornamental lighting",

 

Safety is debatable. There are multitude of studies from the CATO Institute, IIHS and others that all claim different things, and while it can be said that driving 35 MPH is safer than 75 MPH, any decrease in speed limits will generally result in a decrease in accidents. But other factors are in play as well, including the increased use and installation of safety belts, crumple zones, and just increased safety technologies that were just then being implemented into cars.

 

The NMSL was not really enforced in most states. In New York alone, there was an 83% non-compliance rate. In Texas, this ranged from 82% on rural roads to over 60% on urban interstates. Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Utah replaced traditional speeding fines with $5 – $15 "energy wasting" fines as long as drivers did not exceed the speed limit in effect before NMSL. North Dakota lowered their tickets to $15, and only if you went over the pre-NMSL speed limit. Nearly every state had bills to oppose the NMSL by the 1980s, and it was long parodied, not enforced or mocked openly (e.g. Nevada posted a 70 MPH limit on a several mile stretch of I-80).

 

The government even mandated speedometers to "emphasize" 55 MPH and to have a "maximum" speed of 85 MPH.

 

Traffic moves most efficiently and safely when the speed limit is set to the 85th percentile in most cases - rural interstates, for instance. In West Virginia, raising the interstate limit to 70 MPH (from 65 MPH) and four-lane highways to 65 MPH (from 55 MPH) resulted in much lower accident and death rates on those roadway types over a ten year period (I posted this a while back), even while more people drove on the highways. In Kentucky, the interstate and parkway limit was raised to 70 MPH from 65 MPH, and accidents and deaths on those roadway types dropped. Those speeds closely matched the 85th percentile.

 

In Ohio, they are debating on whether to raise the interstate limit to 70 MPH. The 85th percentile on interstates in rural areas exceeds 70 MPH in most cases. On other four-lane roads, it exceeds the mismatch of speed limits, with some being 55, others 60, and some 65, with varying difference in roadway construction, intersection spacing or interchanges.

 

--

 

In reply to Jeffrey (made after I posted this), the AA Highway's accident rate has stabilized but what the KYTC found was that the highway's design - straight, with few variances, and the lack of interaction, led to a high rate of drivers that fell asleep at the wheel. Hence why it was the first road in the state to feature centerline rumble strips. It shockingly has an 85th percentile in the 70 MPH range, despite its 55 MPH speed limit! It is almost entirely rural, with few interactions sans at its western terminus and at Maysville (which is being bypassed), and there was a study completed that acknowledged that the highway should have been built... as an interstate.

They have determined that at least 25% of the traffic on I-95 never stops and never buys fuel in North Carolina.  Therefore 25% is not paying for the road's maintenance or planned expansion.  So a toll has been proposed to capture that lost revenue, and THE TRUCKERS FREAK OUT. 

 

Hmmm, that probably helps explain why smaller states have more tolled mileage and bridges than larger ones as a percentage of the total.

Safety decreases when there is greater differential in speeds. 85% of all cars going 70 mph is safer than 50% going 70mph, 25% going 90, and 25% going 60mph (all other things being equal )for example. This is one reason the split speed limit for trucks was done away with in Ohio

^ That day was magic. Well, it was the work of science actually, but it felt like magic.

Orange barrels have shown up on I-75 in the vicinity of Mitchell. I assume they are proceeding with only reconstruction of the interchange itself, not widening I-75 except for maybe the overpass.

Yeah, I noticed more heavy equipment in the area. 

 

Last night as I was driving south through Lockland, I saw a train hauling a pair of Abrams tanks over I-75 on a flat car.  So those incredibly heavy tanks passed over that double track overpass that dates from the canal era, yet tanks cannot be hauled on our so-called "defense highways". 

Why are there still workers along the shoulders doing work??? I thought budget cuts canceled this for awhile!

The sad truth is that ODOT's budget cuts really extending the timeline of construction. There will be no delays in construction start dates/phase commencements. The construction will instead be stretched over longer periods of time in order to "alleviate costs". The rationale behind this is that cost can be distributed more economically over a longer stretch of time.

 

In the end, the average driver will have to deal with more congestion and longer traffic delays since the rate of construction is being slowed, not postponed.

No. This phase of construction, which involves the reconstruction of the Mitchell Avenue interchange and widening of Interstate 75 in that segment is on-track. The Mitchell Avenue rebuild, which costs $53.6 million, was already funded and is actually Phase 1. The Monmouth Avenue overpass was technically Phase 2.

All this 75/BSB stuff is like a really bad dream. Those who think the streetcar is a boondoggle are complaining about pocket change.

Agreed. It's obvious that there are needs for major improvements, such as the closing of various exit/entrance ramps, the construction of some collector/distributor lanes, and the reconfiguration of some interchanges, but it's obvious that widening it entirely to four lanes isn't going to be practical or even financially doable.

^It needs to be done. One uptick in the local economy will send it into gridlock.

I don't see the need for any work.  There are few developable sites along I-75, and the traffic delays in no way compare to those of bigger cities.

Does anyone know if they are only going to compete the interchange itself, or will they actually be widening the small section of I-75 in this area at the same time?

My guess is that they'd widen the bridge and maybe have some paved area that's striped off, but the ramps will have their interface with the mainline adjusted somewhat to account for the missing fourth lane, but which won't require any changes if and when they are finally added.  There's no point in adding a lane then dropping it out again right away, though I could see them trying to extend the overly long entrance ramp from Central Parkway northbound to Mitchell as an auxiliary lane.  To do the same from Mitchell northbound to the Norwood Lateral would probably be more useful, but that would require rebuilding the B&O/I&O Midland rail bridge over the highway, and I doubt that's in the cards. 

  There's no point in adding a lane then dropping it out again right away

 

It's been done a lot nonetheless in the past, though!

As of this morning orange barrels are out, blocking the emergency shoulders near Mitchell.  They had about 20 dump trucks lined up this morning collecting dirt from the uphill side, so it's safe to say the work is underway and we'll be seeing retaining wall construction and so on shortly.  Still no sign of work on widening/replacing the bridge.  I would imagine that the whole highway is going to shifted one way to allow removal of one half of the overpass, then the other way. 

If only commuters knew how to *avoid* I-75, there wouldn't be an impending clusterfudge with the construction.

If only commuters knew how to *avoid* I-75, there wouldn't be an impending clusterfudge with the construction.

Considering that ODOT made the decision to maintain wider lanes during construction in order to allow semis to keep using I-75, I don't think they really care about how big of a traff*ck they create. Rerouting through trucks would require some planning; so would informing commuters about alternate routes (or transit).

 

Imagine if ODOT funded extra Metro express routes, from various park and rides along I-75 to Downtown, during the construction period.

^As if a high percentage of the automobile traffic was destined for downtown?

 

Downtown Cincinnati contains about 14% of all of the jobs in Hamilton County. Expanding to the entire region, the percentage would be even less. Most commuters are driving from suburb to suburb.

Since the ramps from Spring Grove Ave to I-74 S and I-74 N to Colerain Ave will be eliminated, what will be done with the reclaimed land?  Looking at this map, you can see that once the ramp is gone, two segments of Powers St could be reconnected.  (It looks like Powers St is the Duck Creek Rd of the west side.)

 

My random prediction was correct. It looks like the city is studying reconnecting Powers St. http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/transeng/downloads/transeng_pdf43366.pdf

Eigth, traffic headed to and from downtown is not in the least limited to people who work there.  Often a downtown has nearly as many "visitors" in a given workday as workers -- this can be people going to meetings, shopping, staying in hotels, who have jury duty, etc., not to mention the many conventions and large events.  Your 14% statistic -- if true -- is the sort of number used by anti-city political efforts. 

^ I know what you mean, but still the majority of traffic on I-75 is going someplace other than downtown. New express but routes terminating downtown will have only marginal value in alleviating traffic on I-75.

New transportation choices can 'create' traffic. If downtown is seen to have better transportation choices it will be more attractive to employers as a place to set up shop as well as a place to have street festivals, games, etc, that require a lot of transportation capacity in brief periods of time. No one wanted to go to Mason before 71 was built because it largely didn't exist. Building 71 'created' traffic by creating Mason.

Some good news.

 

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20120606/NEWS/306060109/Highway-start-dates-moved-up?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

That is bad news IMO. Very bad!

Of course it is good news. It means more jobs and a more updated I-75.

Here's the thing--

 

Either no freeways need to be updated, or urban ones as well as suburban ones do.  This widening in particular isn't horrible.  Eastern corridor on the other hand is complete CRAP, but fixing mill creek expressway benefits downtown just as much as it benefits the suburbs. You don't want jobs LEAVING downtown because their suburban workforce can't get there. In the mean time, let's keep working on getting that suburban workforce to move into the City.

 

The fact that the freeway is beautifully widened in the suburbs and crap in the City doesn't help us.  Since they aren't going to fund our streetcar, we might as well make sure they upgrade some of our infrastructure.  Just my two cents!

Funding questions loom while reconstruction of I-75 progresses

http://www.urbancincy.com/2012/09/questions-loom-while-reconstruction-of-i-75-progresses/

 

In the early 2000s the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) formulated plans to rebuild and widen Interstate 75 between the Ohio River and I-275. The overall plan was divided into three project areas: The Brent Spence Bridge, Millcreek Expressway (Downtown north to Paddock Road), and Thru the Valley (Paddock Road north to I-275).

 

Originally all fifteen miles of work were expected to be completed by 2020, but ODOT’s financial crisis has meant just three of the 17 phases comprising the Millcreek Expressway and Thru the Valley sections have commenced construction. The complex character of the planned reconstruction means some phases must be built before others but little benefit to safety and traffic capacity will be realized until nearly all sections are complete.

 

In short, work currently underway will build retaining walls and build new overpasses for an expanded highway, but the expressway itself cannot be widened in these areas until adjacent phases are completed.  So improvements currently under construction at Mitchell Ave. might be decades old before they are put to full use – or worse, these future phases might never be built.

 

Thus far, ODOT has only completed the $7.1 million second phase which rebuilt the Monmouth Street overpass in Camp Washington. Originally planned to be built as part of Phase 5 (Hopple Street to Mitchell Avenue), the Monmouth Street Overpass was deemed “shovel-ready” and funded through the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009.

 

Read more...

To clarify, I-75 will NOT be paved for 8 lanes near Mitchell Ave. until after adjacent phases are built. 

Looks like the first beams for the Mitchell Ave. overpass are being placed tonight.  Saw three big beams staged at the wide spot at Cross County headed south, then two big cranes at Mitchell that will lift them into place sometime overnight. 

 

I kept waiting for a center pier to be built at Mitchell, but it appears that it will be a single span overpass with huge beams kind of like Paddock Rd. 

^I saw those girders too. It was amazing to see those big things on I-75. That was probably the largest load I have ever seen on an interstate.

They're in place, 5 of them.  Unfortunately they decided to do the faux stone wall molding for the abutments.  I have no idea why ODOT keeps picking out the absolute ugliest embellishments possible for its projects all across the state. 

ODOT generally picks the blandest way to do things. I have friends that are highway and bridge engineers who moved here from other states for work and they all comment on that.

^Yep. The same can be said for the ugly ramp meters on I-74.

The California box girder crossing Broadway, connecting 2nd St. with the 3rd St. Viaduct, is the best thing ODOT has built in Cincinnati since its inception.  That only happened because of some change late in the FWW process where they had to quickly redesign that thing for the Riverfront Transit Center (needed the long span to allow for an eastern track entrance) and concrete prices happened to have dropped. 

^ should be noted the box girder is in bad shape and recently received a 5 out of 10 rating on the cities bridge list. All other bridges around FFW are 8's.

 

Something to do with its construction and not with the actual design itself.

 

I'm surprised we don't have more Of those. I lived out west during coop in college and saw those everywhere.

 

Why does OH have so few?

Well it looks good, and that's all I care about. 

 

^ should be noted the box girder is in bad shape and recently received a 5 out of 10 rating on the cities bridge list. All other bridges around FFW are 8's.

 

Something to do with its construction and not with the actual design itself.

 

I'm surprised we don't have more Of those. I lived out west during coop in college and saw those everywhere.

 

Why does OH have so few?

 

I'm not a CE but I would assume it is over-engjneered for what tends to be shorter and less earthquake-resistant applications in Ohio vs. Cali.