Pickaway County secures $2 million for Pickaway East-West Connector
August 4, 2009Circleville, OH — Pickaway County officials received word today from Senator Voinovich that $2 million has been set aside for the Pickaway East-West Connector (“Connector”) in the Senate Transportation and Housing and Urban Development Appropriations bill. The bill passed out of Senate Committee and is headed for final passage in early fall. The $2 million will be used for Right of Way acquisition for the Connector.
The Pickaway East-West Connector is a proposed four-lane roadway stretching roughly three to four miles from the southern end of Rickenbacker Airport in the vicinity of the Norfolk Southern Rickenbacker Intermodal Terminal (“Intermodal”) to US 23. Total cost of the Connector, including engineering, environmental, design, Right of Way Acquisition, and construction is estimated at $44 million.
I had forgotten about this project, so I did a web search and found a Powerpoint presentation (in PDF format) on MORPC’s site if you want to read more about it. The map to the right shows the new connector as dashed red line just south of the airport. All those solid red lines are “major widenings.” US-23 is to be converted to a freeway, with interchanges at London-Groveport Rd, the new connector, Duvall Rd, as well as a bypass around South Bloomfield.
The presentation shows the new roadway as a 50 MPH four lane divided highway, with a 10-foot wide shared use path on one side.
I think a shared use path is probably about as multi-modal as I could expect for a major truck route, but I do really hope some comprehensive planning is done for the growth that’s bound to occur in this area. With all those “major widenings” to occur, there will be a huge opportunity to shape the highway design and land use in the area. And you know there will be a huge growth in residences to be close to all the jobs near Rickenbacker. Do all of those new residents have to drive cars to work? Hopefully not if we plan properly to provide alternative options.
I see nothing indicating anything about alternative options to cars in this plan. A highway conversion and several *major* road widenings: what other kind of development could we expect? And then when traffic becomes too heavy because everyone’s driving a car, well, you know the drill…more lanes!
That’s basically what I was thinking, but I feel like I don’t really have enough details of future development plans to complain too much without the facts. I suggest that there needs to be a dense, walkable neighborhood center that can be connected to the rest of the city with transit. And that’s not unique to the far south side/Rickenbacker. That’s all new development.
i live in the middle of all of this east-west connector.I also have lived in duvall all of my life.And sofar know body has said anything about the impact on people that has lived here all this time.It seems to be all about the money! And not for the people either.And i guess with the loss of more companies moving.They must have a crystal ball to see the future. To tell that they need more roads.But they are not saying anything about the estamited $20.per gal.gas in 2030.
This project is all about politics and the use of money not about the land use and the lives of the people who live and have property on Duvall Rd. There were so many other ways they could have gone without destroying homes and farm land. I will tell ODOT now it is going to be costly for aquisitions, and we are not unintelligent hillbillies that you can advantage of, for this roads for profit project.