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CINCINNATI — Motorists who travel to and from Cincinnati on Interstate 75 during rush hour know what to expect.
You’re not going to get very far in a short amount of time.
Two stretches of I-75 in the Cincinnati area have been identified as being among the 328 most seriously congested in the country in a recent report by the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University.
The single most congested stretch of highway in the area is southbound I-75, from the Interstate 74 exit to West Seventh Street, or exit 1.
The 3.4-mile stretch of road connects the area known as Pill Hill, where many of the region’s largest medical centers and universities are located, to downtown Cincinnati.
That stretch of road ranked 21st nationally in terms of being unreliable.
A three-mile trip on southbound I-75 through downtown can take 15 minutes rather than an expected six-minute trip in free-flowing traffic.
“Normally, the heavy congestion is in the afternoon only (between I-74 and Seventh Street),” said ARTIMIS supervisor James Hungler. “Because you’re going from four lanes, and the majority of people are going to squeeze into two lanes (when crossing into Kentucky).”
The report estimates more than 214,000 million person hours are wasted each year by people sitting in traffic at that one stretch, using 343,000 gallons of gasoline.
“I avoid most of I-75 if possible for my daily commute, but I still get stuck at the I-75, I-74 interchange almost every day, near Hopple Street,” said Lisa Vinnedge, of Hamilton, who travels to Cincinnati Children’s hospital for work every day.
Another stretch of road that Butler County residents may be more familiar with is also along I-75 south from the Glendale-Milford Road exit to the Ronald Reagan Cross County Highway exit. The area is also known as the Lockland Split, where I-75’s northbound and southbound lanes split. It was ranked 29th nationally in terms of being unreliable.
People stuck in traffic spend 164,000 hours in traffic and waste 325,000 gallons of fuel in the process every year.
“On rare occasions, if I have to go to the east side of Hamilton or Fairfield Twp. before or after work, I will take I-75 the entire length from Hamilton to Cincinnati,” Vinnedge said. “In those cases, traffic backs up at Union Centre, I-275, at the Lockland Split/GE and again at Hopple Street.
“If I have to take that route, it takes me well over an hour to commute.”
Two highway construction projects are in the works to alleviate the congestion in those areas.
The much-publicized Brent Spence Bridge project and the Mill Creek Expressway project are key, said John Milesky, a design engineer with the Ohio Department of Transportation’s District 8 office.
“They’re going to be adding a fourth lane in those areas in each direction,” Milesky said.
The first of the eight-phase, $664 million widening project began in August at the Mitchell Avenue interchange. The project will reconstruct the highway to allow for four continuous lanes in each direction from the Interstate 74 interchange to just north of the Mitchell Avenue interchange, according to ODOT.
Completion for phase one of the project is scheduled for July 2014 at a cost of nearly $54 million.
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