COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Ohio Department of Transportation is urging drivers on the north end of I-270 this summer to be patient.
Patient with the traffic jams in construction zones that stretch from Rt. 33 on the west to Cleveland Avenue on the east. Patient that some of the region’s largest road construction projects will end.
Eventually.
“We’re getting it all done in two or three years,” said Ferzan Ahmed, ODOT’s district deputy director for central Ohio. “That’s going to give us a generation of stress-free and safe commutes.”
READ MORE: In the Columbus Dispatch
ODOT’s original plans didn’t call for three of the four busiest I-270 interchanges on the north side to be under construction at once. However, outside factors — chiefly, funding — pushed up the start and eventual completion of several projects.
Construction is to continue this year on the I-270/Rt. 23 interchange. Projects at Rts. 33 and 315 also are starting this year or already have begun. A smaller plan to redesign ramps at Cleveland Avenue should be finished by the end of 2015.
It adds up to more than $200 million in construction work, hundreds of orange barrels and countless traffic backups. But Ahmed said the finished interchanges will be safer and faster for drivers, even if the wait is excruciating.