U.S. Route 23: ODOT looking at ways to improve traffic flow through Delaware County

Jim Fischer
·4 min read

The Ohio Department of Transportation continues to investigate improvements, upgrades and a bypass as possibilities to address increasing traffic along U.S. Route 23 through Delaware County.

ODOT’s “Route 23 Connect” study – a $2 million effort also sponsored by the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission and the Toledo Metropolitan Area of Governments – is focusing its efforts currently on the busy corridor in Delaware County. That includes gathering input and feedback through a series of public meetings held in the summer and again earlier this fall.

The Ohio Department of Transportation is considering six concepts to address increasing traffic along U.S. Route 23 through Delaware County. These three concepts focus on the western connection.
The Ohio Department of Transportation is considering six concepts to address increasing traffic along U.S. Route 23 through Delaware County. These three concepts focus on the western connection.

“In general, ODOT collects data on congestion, safety and other metrics. Then we look at poorly performing segments for potential improvement,” Anthony Turowski, planning engineer with ODOT District 6, told ThisWeek.

More: Route 23 in Delaware County has more traffic than it can handle, but what's the solution?

He said the department works with local governments and road users to identify areas of potential need.

“ODOT is seeking to identify a feasible concept to make a free-flowing connection between Toledo and Columbus in this study,” he said.

Details of the study, including links to documents and public comments, are available at publicinput.com/23connect.

Project goals include reducing traffic and travel times from the Waldo area to I-270 and vice versa, improving safety for local trips and reducing congestion for regional travel, according to documents provided as part of the public input sessions.

The Ohio Department of Transportation is considering six concepts to address increasing traffic along U.S. Route 23 through Delaware County. These three concepts focus on the eastern connection.
The Ohio Department of Transportation is considering six concepts to address increasing traffic along U.S. Route 23 through Delaware County. These three concepts focus on the eastern connection.

Turowski said ODOT traffic data shows that traffic volumes already are running 30% higher than some sections of Route 23 – mostly in Delaware County – were designed to handle.

In 1990, traffic along the nearly 25-mile stretch of road averaged about 55,000 vehicles a day near the intersection of Route 23 and I-270 to the south and 17,000 per day at state Route 229 (Norton Road), the signaled intersection just before the road becomes a divided highway at Waldo to the north.

More: State Route 750 through Powell in line for $1.1 million in repaving, other work in 2022

More: Engineering study underway for new I-71 interchange near Route 36 in Delaware County

Today, the average vehicle counts have reached about 80,000 vehicles at Route 23/I-270 and 30,000 at Waldo, with the highest percentage increase in tractor-trailers.

In addition, 38 traffic signals between Worthington and the Marion County line further slow the flow of traffic.

“The existing Route 23 is not just a problem for commuters coming through Delaware County but also for our local commuters,” Delaware County engineer Chris Bauserman told Delaware County commissioners Nov. 23.

Preliminary concepts for improving Route 23 in the county include alternate routes that would make use, in part, of existing routes -- U.S. Route 36 and I-71 to the east and U.S. Route 33, U.S. Route 42 and I-270 to the west. Public comment regarding both bypass options centered on disruption to and loss of property from landowners potentially affected by those new connections.

Bauserman addressed the study and those concerns during the Nov. 23 commissioners meeting.

“Projects like this always create concerns from residents, and we can’t diminish that,” Bauserman said. “There is going to be a lot more discussion about this, but no matter which way it goes, there will be some people not happy about the outcome.”

Bauserman said it's still too early in the process to identify specific routes or alignments of any Route 23 bypass or whether that is the most likely outcome of the study.

“At this point, the commissioners are confident that ODOT is managing this process responsibly,” Jane Hawes, director of communications for the county commissioners, told ThisWeek. “Input from all the potentially impacted stakeholders is being sought out, accepted and will be used to make a good decision.”

“The next steps in the study are for ODOT to measure the concepts on the various metrics so we have a good idea of how we expect them to perform and what they would cost in terms of budget and impacts,” Turowski said. “We will present that information to stakeholders and the public in the spring.”

Turowski said a recommended concept could be reached by mid-2022. This concept then would be studied further, with any final plan then “driven by funding availability.”

“It is possible that no feasible solution is found or that funding will not be available at the scale necessary to build an improvement,” Turowski said.

He added that, should an alternate route be determined to be the best solution and a bypass constructed, “ODOT would still maintain existing U.S. 23 as it is today.”

“Some portions of the roadway are within the cities of Delaware, Columbus and Worthington, and they would continue to maintain their pieces as they do today,” he said. “It is likely that other improvements on that existing roadway would still be needed, and ODOT would work to implement them separate from this study.”

Columbus Dispatch reporter Marc Kovac contributed to this story.

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This article originally appeared on ThisWeek: ODOT studying ways to improve Route 23 traffic flow in Delaware County