The light traffic these days on the Ohio Turnpike reminds truck driver Jim Keeler of his early days behind the wheel in the early 1960s.
“There’s not as much traffic — it makes our job easier,” said Mr. Keeler, 78, of Point Place, who began his trucking career at age 18 and has driven the last 23 years for Nagle Line in Lake Township.
Ohio Turnpike data tell the same tale. Since the second week of March, spokesman Brian Newbacher said, passenger-vehicle traffic has plunged more than 68 percent as Ohio and neighboring states issued stay-at-home orders to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Commercial traffic is off by a comparatively small 13 percent, Mr. Newbacher said. That gives the remaining truckers a lot more open pavement and, they say, a lot less bad-driver behavior to deal with.
“Their biggest challenge is all the distracted driving out there, and there just isn’t as much of that right now,” said Edwin Nagle III, president and chief executive of the Nagle Companies.
“Crashes are down quite a bit right now,” agreed Tony Tomase, proprietor of Getgo Transportation on Lemoyne Road just north of Lake High School. “It’s shocking to see, but that’s one good thing that’s happening.”
Mr. Nagle said his company’s business — primarily hauling frozen or refrigerated foods — is holding its own, with more deliveries to supermarkets and fewer for restaurants and institutional customers.
But Mr. Tomase said his business, primarily hauling dry goods in conventional trailers, is down about 15 percent and spot-market freight rates have plummeted as truckers whose normal traffic has dried up chase whatever cargoes they can find.
“It’s a tough world out there right now,” he said Friday, noting that tanker fleets that haul gasoline from wholesale racks to filling stations are taking a particularly bad beating with personal travel withering.
The declines in both car and truck traffic are taking a significant bite out of the Ohio Turnpike’s toll revenue, however, the Ohio Turnpike and Infrastructure Commission announced last week that its major construction program is starting on time this month, with projects scattered across the toll road’s 241 miles.
“No decisions have been made yet, but we are looking at capital projects and may delay a number of small projects until next year,” Mr. Newbacher said. “We will also look at projects scheduled for 2021 to determine if some of those projects can be delayed until 2022.”
Manual fare collection has halted at 21 of the turnpike’s 31 toll plazas, with automatic payment machines accepting both cash and credit cards, the spokesman said. The 10 other plazas don’t have payment machines, so those locations will have “a minimal number of toll collectors for the foreseeable future” while maintaining “mandatory hygiene practices” and physical distancing among employees, he said.
The turnpike will benefit, Mr. Newbacher noted, from a recent refinancing of $413.5 million in bonds that will save it $139.8 million in debt service over the next 28 years, representing a “net present value savings” of $87.7 million.
No layoffs have occurred among turnpike staff, but part-time toll collectors are getting fewer shifts and hiring has been frozen.
And with food sold at service plazas only on a carry-out basis, some vendors have reduced hours and others have suspended operations, Mr. Newbacher said.
In northwest Ohio, the new construction season’s main projects are two west of Toledo that are continuing from last year and a 9½-mile repair and resurfacing project running from just west of the Elmore interchange to just west of the Fremont interchange.
Replacement of the turnpike’s bridges over State Rt. 108 near Wauseon and elimination of a neighboring bridge over an abandoned railroad right-of-way began in 2019, when new abutments and piers were built between the existing bridges at Route 109 and fill was placed in the middle at the old railroad.
Later this spring, new roadway in the median will be ready for use while the existing bridge deck at Route 109 is replaced and the bridges at the old railroad are removed and filled in. The $8.6 million contract held by Kokosing Construction Co., which also includes deck work on a local-road bridge over the turnpike nearby, is scheduled for completion this year, Mr. Newbacher said.
At a 4½ mile section near Swanton where new pavement was built in the median last year for construction of a new mainline toll plaza, meanwhile, the original roadway is to be rebuilt this year and ramp connections for toll booths off to the side will be built.
Kokosing also holds that $30.75 million contract, while a separate contract is to be awarded by early summer for construction of the toll booths and infrastructure for highway-speed electronic tolling on the main line for E-ZPass users.
The new toll plaza is scheduled for completion next year, after which toll collection at the Delta, Wauseon, Archbold, and Bryan interchanges is scheduled to end. The current Westgate plaza near Edon, Ohio is being replaced with a separate-fare toll plaza that also will have highway-speed lanes for electronic toll collection on the westbound side only.
The repair and resurfacing project in Ottawa and Sandusky counties is slated to involve all lanes between turnpike mileposts 80.50 and 90.02, with traffic shifted onto one half of the roadway in each direction while the other half is worked on.
Another resurfacing project will affect only the right and center lanes and the right shoulder between mileposts 118.8 and 127.23, east of the U.S. 250 interchange near Milan, Ohio.
In both work zones, two lanes are to remain open during the day in each direction, but during night work, one or both directions may be restricted to a single lane.
Kokosing holds the former contract for about $14.25 million, while Gerken Paving, Inc., has the latter at about $12 million. Both are slated for completion by November.
Turnpike traffic will have a minimal impact, meanwhile, from deck replacements on four overpasses for local roads in Fulton County. County roads 17-3, 14, and 11 and Pike Township Road 10 all will be detoured during the work.
All other long-term construction planned for this year will be in the Cleveland area or farther east.
With less traffic on the turnpike, the work zones are less likely to cause congestion headaches for truckers like Mr. Keeler.
And while “social distancing” is making the job a little more lonely — he can’t interact with plant workers during unloading the way he’s used to, nor can he go inside to use restrooms — he has noticed one other positive while out on the road moving critical freight.
“I’m getting a lot more thumbs-ups from other drivers, and a lot fewer middle fingers,” Mr. Keeler said.
First Published April 14, 2020, 10:00 a.m.
