COLUMBUS – The process is underway to transform a 35-mile stretch of road traversing the central Ohio countryside into the highway of the future.
Construction started Tuesday on the $4.8 million first phase of creating the “Smart Mobility Corridor,” the portion of U.S. 33 that runs from Dublin, through Union County to East Liberty in Logan County, and which will someday be home to some of the first self-driving vehicles in the nation.
Workers are installing 35 miles of high-capacity fiber optic cable underground alongside the roadway, which carries 50,000 vehicles daily.
This section of U.S. 33 is called the “Smart Mobility Corridor” because the cable will ultimately link automobile researchers with data from roadside sensors to be constructed in a future phase of construction.
Those connections will give researchers the ability to collect data as they safely test smart transportation technologies including autonomous and connected vehicles in all weather conditions.
The underground installation, which is expected to be completed this year, is split up into four parts.
By the time it is completed in October, the underground cables will stretch from the existing Metro Data Center, located just inside I-270 near the U.S. 33 interchange, to a telecommunications building to be constructed at the at U.S. 33/State Route 347 exchange in East Liberty (see map above).