DELAWARE, Ohio — Having ruled out building a Delaware Bypass for U.S. 23 north of Columbus, the Ohio Department of Transportation now is seeking information from community and business leaders. However, none of a series of public hearings will be held in northwest Ohio.
The Toledo area has had a long-standing interest in U.S. 23’s condition, but the first four meetings will be held elsewhere in the state, although the fifth and final meeting will be online.
The meetings are to inform ODOT’s planning for small-scale improvements along the busy route.
“If there’s a housing development coming soon, or feedback from a large trucking company about a particular intersection, that information would be key as we plan for improvements,” said Breanna Badanes, a regional ODOT spokesman in central Ohio.
Ms. Badanes said the meetings are intended not as general public forums, but as opportunities for ODOT to collect such information from “partner agencies” in the immediate area that include local governments “as well as logistics, transit, and economic development agencies ... on behalf of their constituents and members.”
Public meetings about that part of U.S. 23 are planned later this year, she said.
The Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Governments, which has been among Toledo-area interests calling on ODOT for many years to provide northwest Ohio with a faster route to Ohio’s state capital, put out a notice about the series of meetings last week.
“While TMACOG and its partners continue to push for a lasting solution” to U.S. 23 congestion problems through the Delaware area, “ODOT is initially planning smaller projects to improve specific parts of the Route 23 corridor in and around Delaware,” the metropolitan council noted.
All five meetings are scheduled to start at noon. The schedule is:
● Tuesday at the Troy Township Hall, 4293 U.S. 23, north of Delaware, with a focus on the section between State Rt. 229 and Hills-Miller Road north of Delaware.
● Wednesday at Co-Hatch Delaware, Hall of Mirrors, 19 E. William St., Delaware, with a focus between Hills-Miller and Glenn Parkway.
● Thursday in the Moffett Room at Orange Township Hall, 1688 E. Orange Rd., Lewis Center, with a focus between Glenn and State Rt. 750.
● Aug. 30 in the multipurpose room at Highbanks Metropark Nature Center, 9466 Columbus Pike, Lewis Center, with a focus between Route 750 and I-270.
● The online meeting Aug. 31, will cover the entire corridor and be accessible via http://publicinput.com/23connect.
“While ODOT won’t be presenting or sharing information at the community partner meetings, the information collected from our partner organizations will inform the public engagement that will occur later this year,” Ms. Badanes said. “We do plan to roll out a similar mapping activity to the public in a couple of months to provide location-specific feedback on potential new improvement concepts along the corridor.”
The lack of a freeway connection between Toledo and Columbus has long been decried by political leaders and business interests in northwest Ohio, who argue that the 38 traffic signals on U.S. 23 between Route 229 and the I-270 beltway impede commerce in that corridor and give the region second-class status compared with Ohio’s other major cities.
But ODOT announced in May that it was dropping a formal study of several bypass options linking U.S. 23 with either I-71 to the east or U.S. 33 to the west on the grounds that the cost of building any of those roadways — some of which were estimated at more than $1 billion — or converting existing U.S. 23 into a freeway could not be justified for the amount of travel time they would save.
Contact David Patch at
dpatch@theblade.com.
First Published August 19, 2022, 2:23 p.m.
