Decision to put off U.S. 33 project not welcome news - Other Community News - Ohioans for Responsible Rural Development

Lancaster Eagle-Gazette
Published February 5, 2012

By Jeff Barron

Anyone commuting to Columbus on U.S. 33 knows the daily routine is not pleasant.

It consists largely of stop-and-go driving in heavy traffic all the way to the Interstate 70 entrance. If that's not enough frustration, commuters have to repeat the routine on the way home.

It's agonizing at best and incidents such as January's two crashes involving nine vehicles at the Winchester Road intersection can try commuters' patience even more.

"Traffic is an issue," Fairfield County Regional Planning Commission Executive Director Holly Mattei said. "I think you see a lot of potential for rear-end accidents when you have the traffic light situation that we have on U.S. 33 currently. The 33 corridor needs to be addressed, in my opinion."

But it won't be addressed anytime soon, if at all.

The state planned to build a $60 million interchange at the intersection of U.S. 33 and Winchester Road to as part of the plan to make U.S. 33 a limited access freeway from the Lancaster Bypass all the way up to I-70. The project did not have a starting date.

But this past week, the project was removed from the state Transportation Review Advisory Council funding list.

"There are no plans to fund it for the foreseeable future," said Nick Gill, Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission assistant director of transportation. "Maybe at some point in time the federal government or stakeholders will find a way to correct the problem of no funding. Central Ohio is going to continue to grow, so we must find the funding for it. But there is no immediate action planned for the Carroll intersection."

Mattei said the Metropolitan Transportation Plan list merely is a draft and said she hoped the Carroll interchange still will be built someday.

"I didn't expect it to be removed from the (TRAC) list," she said. "I didn't expect it to get funding in the near future, but to have it removed from the list was surprising to me."

Mattei, also a member of the MORPC Transportation Advisory Board, said it was removed because MORPC didn't have it high enough on its priority list.

"We were trying to look at ways to do some shorter-term fixes that were cheaper," she said. "That's why it didn't necessarily make it higher on the list. But it is what it is."

Read the full story on the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette website.

Related article:  Local officials fear absence of dollars to achieve MORPC road plans (Pataskala Standard)