Ergo, ~10% of all drivers are delivering pizzas. Wait...I'm bad with numbers.

Well the prospect of driverless cars is pretty unimpressive when you consider that a 19 year-old stoner with a cracked windshield, no side mirror, and a garbage bag coving a window can get a pizza to you.   

Well, then.

This project is currently in the "big confusing mess" stage. I don't even understand what's going on in this traffic pattern:

 

 

 

Here's the completed Mitchell Avenue interchange (although you can see construction to the north):

 

Contraflow. They used it in Charleston, W.Va. for the deck overlays on the overpasses so they could do more than one lane at a time. It looks like they are using that so they can completely tear out large sections of the pavement for full rebuild.

The Hopple St. overpass and ramps are kind of scary.  It's like you're on Pee-Wee's Playhouse because nothing is level for about a quarter mile.  The turn from MLK westbound onto I-75/74 north is incredibly sharp.  I'm surprised that they didn't do a continuous right turn. 

The sightlines from MLK west when trying to turn onto the jughandle are terrible as well. I stopped going that way to get to Central Parkway because I didn't trust that someone wouldn't come blasting up the hill while I was making that incredibly huge left turn.

The Hopple St. overpass and ramps are kind of scary.  It's like you're on Pee-Wee's Playhouse because nothing is level for about a quarter mile.  The turn from MLK westbound onto I-75/74 north is incredibly sharp.  I'm surprised that they didn't do a continuous right turn.

 

Yup. It's a terrible design. Only a matter of time before someone comes flying down the hill inebriated and makes that turn a little too fast. Before you know it there's a car flying off that bridge onto the northbound lanes of I-75.

I think it's really tough to know where the intersections are.  I know they're not done yet but because there aren't crosswalk signs and those sorts of things you don't have anything other than the traffic lights indicating that you're approaching an intersection.  If the slope of the bridge had leveled off at the intersections that would have helped. 

Well, we might as well stop building roads because there is the chance a drunk or high driver will just crash into everything and kill themselves or others!

The Hopple St. overpass and ramps are kind of scary.  It's like you're on Pee-Wee's Playhouse because nothing is level for about a quarter mile.  The turn from MLK westbound onto I-75/74 north is incredibly sharp.  I'm surprised that they didn't do a continuous right turn. 

 

Design for cars and for pedestrians are usually at odds with each other. A continuous right turn, with a larger turning radius, would have made it harder for a pedestrian to cross the ramp.

No pedestrians are crossing that bridge.  By none I mean maybe 100 per day. 

I actually get about 20 alighting a per day on Rt 20 from people trying to get to Camp Washington it up the hill and weekly requests to add a bus stop on the bridge for the 38X and XTRA Service. I know for a fact that there's at least one 14 year old who lives on McMicken, walks across the top of that embankment, crosses the bridge, and walks all the way to Hopple and Colerain to catch his bus to Withrow every day.

 

It's technically still just a city street and requires pedestrian access. Instead of designing for cars and pedestrians, they designed it for cars and then added the required pedestrian facilities.

Norwood Lateral to I-75 ramp to close for 28 days:

 

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2016/04/15/norwood-lateral-ramp-sb--75-scheduled-closure/83111080/

Is that because of work on the railroad overpass?  They just rebuilt the ramp maybe two years ago. 

Now that the new railroad overpass is so much wider, the ramp needs to move further west.

Yeah if you look at the overpass you'll see that the western half seems to be a "lane" longer than the eastern half.  Also there is a slight difference in the construction of that half. 

The one-way portions of Elmore Street and Colerain Avenue in Northside are being converted to two-way. Crews have been installing new sidewalks and traffic light in preparation for this change. These streets had been one-way because they previously funneled traffic to and from the highway ramps that were removed as part of the Mill Creek Expressway project.

 

I was hoping that Powers Street would be re-connected to help re-develop the street grid in this corner of the neighborhood that was decimated by highway ramps, but unfortunately it looks like that is not happening.

Nice. This is most likely the final part of the Colrain Ave. improvements that saw Colrain/Beekman, Colrain/Virginia and Colrain/Blue Rock improved. Are they (ODOT) still wanting to widen Colrain to 12' lanes from Beeckman to Elmore? They had marked pretty much all properties facing the street for removal on a study map when I attended the open houses.

 

And wow - look at Northside filling in! (Updated aerials on Google.)

Council just voted to spend $300k on design work for the bridge that would connect Elmore and Central Parkway.

 

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2016/05/10/bew-bridge-to-cincinnati-state-clifton-advances.html

The latest round of TIGER funding was announced and Cincinnati, again, did not receive funding for the Elmore Street Connector a.k.a. Cincinnati State Bridge. Pittsburgh received funding to cap a highway, several cities received funding for complete streets projects, and Cincinnati keeps applying for funding for...a new highway overpass.

The latest round of TIGER funding was announced and Cincinnati, again, did not receive funding for the Elmore Street Connector a.k.a. Cincinnati State Bridge. Pittsburgh received funding to cap a highway, several cities received funding for complete streets projects, and Cincinnati keeps applying for funding for...a new highway overpass.

 

An overpass-to-nowhere. 

 

 

 

 

I like the "Delicate Flower Bridge" name :)

The latest round of TIGER funding was announced and Cincinnati, again, did not receive funding for the Elmore Street Connector a.k.a. Cincinnati State Bridge. Pittsburgh received funding to cap a highway, several cities received funding for complete streets projects, and Cincinnati keeps applying for funding for...a new highway overpass.

 

The Pittsburgh cap project is ~$32 million, with 62% (~$20 million) coming from federal funds. The cap itself won't having any buildings on it, but it will connect downtown to the 28 acres of surface parking to the east that are slated for redevelopment. Interesting project!

 

http://www.i-579captiger.com/

http://www.i-579captiger.com/I-579Cap01/Narrative.pdf

What a missed opportunity for Cincy to grab some fed cayshhh.

Whoever in Pittsburgh pulled this project together should get a raise... the City is only putting up ~1.2% of the funding of this project. The rest is coming from private, state, and federal funds. 18% ($5.5 million) is a "land credit" and since that "land" is mostly air above the highway, I'm assuming that was already state/city owned ROW, so it's pretty rich that the applicants get to count that towards their "non federal" contribution. I wish our folks here in Cincinnati/Columbus could be so creative.

 

Even Akron got $5 million to construct a "downtown promenade". Cranley's administration keeps throwing away the opportunity to get some free money on projects that don't even warrant existing, much less deserve TIGER funding. No one is fighting for the Delicate Flowers Bridge excet him.

Since you need to exit I-74 to get to the Delicate Flower Bridge, would it be any more trouble or time consuming to simple exit and cross the Ludlow viaduct?  Is this more about expanding Cincinnati State to Millvale/South Cumminsville with the usual Cranley misdirected focus by claiming this is a transportation need?

 

If highway caps are covered by TIGER grants, why have we not applied for them yet? We've had plans in place to cap Fort Washington Way for years, and the pilings are already in place to support their construction, but Pittsburgh is going to be the city to get it done first, despite their project being introduced much later? Pathetic.

Cranley's administration keeps throwing away the opportunity to get some free money on projects

 

I know that the transfer of funds is a big game, but in any case it isn't "free."

 

 

 

^Fair. There's always more to it, and I oversimplified it.

Yes, we all realize that federal funding comes from somewhere. But the point is the tax dollars that Cincinnatians have paid to the federal government are going to Akron and Pittsburgh because there's nobody in Greater Cincinnati fighting to bring those dollars back home here.

Maybe the strategy should be to apply for a project that isn't completely worthless

^ Yep. Look at the projects that were awarded funding. Complete streets, BRT, transit centers, highway caps, and freight terminal improvements. Very similar to the type of projects that have won TIGER funding in the past. If Cincinnati was smart enough to apply for funding for those type of projects, we probably would've won.

 

Then again, we're dealing with a mayor who said, "let's cancel the streetcar and I'll convince the USDOT to let us keep that federal funding and use it for other things." He's living in a fantasy land.

I think I read somewhere this is the last round of TIGER grants.

It appears (I'm not certain this is actually happening) that crews have built a temporary roadway that will enable traffic from the Hopple St. overpass to enter I-75 north via the ramp near Cincinnati State.  So cars will travel down thee new steep ramp from Hopple (along with I-74 traffic, which will for the first time join mainline traffic north of the I-75/74 split) and then 1/2 mile later veer onto a temporary road that will go uphill to the level of Central Parkway and then join that existing on-ramp. 

According to the project website:

 

[*] Replacement of the railroad overpass just south of the Norwood Lateral is now complete

[*] Widening I-75 between Mitchell and the Norwood Lateral is underway and will be completed by June 2018

[*] The sub-project that includes the new Hopple Street overpass and widening I-75 from the Western Hills Viaduct to the Monmouth Overpass will be completed in July 2017

[*] Work on the new I-74/75 interchange will begin in Feb. 2017 and take until Aug. 2020

 

The part of the project that covers I-75 from the Norwood Later to the Ronald Reagan Highway is still listed as "unscheduled" meaning that there probably hasn't been funding identified for it yet. (Everything between Reagan and I-275 is part of the separate Thru the Valley project, not the Mill Creek Expressway project.)

I see they put ramp meters on the Hopple street nothbound onramp and new BG signs spans the highway.

I see the put ramp meters on the Hopple street nothbound onramp and new BG signs spans the highway.

 

What are "BG signs"?

I see the put ramp meters on the Hopple street nothbound onramp and new BG signs spans the highway.

 

What are "BG signs"?

The are the green signs that span the highway. They call them BG signs. It looks like I-74 will have the 2 right lanes and I-75 will have the 4 left lanes at hopple.

The old I-74 exit from I-75 northbound is now closed. Everything was switched to the new section overnight.

I took some aerials in early October. The traffic patterns have changed a bit since the photos were taken, but you can see the construction progress:

 

I-75/I-74 interchange:

 

Monmouth Avenue overpass:

 

Hopple Street overpass:

 

 

Looking south from Hopple:

a lot of work for 1 lane...

a lot of work for 1 lane...

 

One additional through lane;

Auxiliary lanes/collector-distributor lanes and the reconfiguration of interchanges within the scope of the project to eliminate left-side exits/entrances and to minimize weaving;

All new bridges to replace spans that were approaching or at the end of their life expectancy;

All new pavement base to replace concrete/asphalt that was well past the end of their life expectancy and no longer cost effective to maintain;

All new fiber optics and lighting;

All new drainage structures.

 

I'm sure I'm missing more. All within the existing right-of-way for the most part.

White Castle island is pretty amazing. That place used to always be extremely busy, even in the middle of the night, but it is now dead almost always. Maybe business will pick back up when construction is complete but it's kind of a surreal place now.

White Castle island is pretty amazing. That place used to always be extremely busy, even in the middle of the night, but it is now dead almost always. Maybe business will pick back up when construction is complete but it's kind of a surreal place now.

 

 

I was at that White Castle when I heard that Princess Diana died. 

 

Is it adding just one additional lane onto I-75? I've lived here since beginning of 2013 so it's always been under construction, but with the massive overpasses, etc. it is starting to look like a big city freeway. Not that I think Cincy isn't a big city, just seems like something you would see in Atlanta coming in or something.  The MLK interchange is starting to have that type of effect too a bit

Brand new lights not LED.  What is holding ODOT up? They sure seem slow to change their ways.

Brand new lights not LED.  What is holding ODOT up? They sure seem slow to change their ways.

 

It's usually because the specifications were initially written to include high pressure sodium (HPS) lights. Those specifications were written years ago when those lights were commonplace and those items were long ago ordered and stored.

 

I noticed that when the Innerbelt Bridge in Cleveland was rebuilt, the new I-90 westbound crossing (which served both west and east traffic for several years) included HPS lights. When the eastbound crossing opened a few months ago, it included LED lights. The westbound bridge had the HPS housing replaced with LED units.

 

On newer projects in this district, LED lights are specified in the contracts. They are installed by default instead of HPS.

As of this week it appears that I-75 from the viaduct north to I-74 is finished.  Zero orange barrels.  I drove it this morning north from Bank St.  The divide to I-74 has been moved maybe 1/2 mile south from its previous "last-minute" location.  It was like riding a magic carpet compared to what we've been putting up with for the past 4 years.