Road Warrior

Avoid southbound I-75 in Cincinnati tonight, Saturday

UPDATE: ODOT just announced Friday morning that this work has been postponed because of an impending ice storm. Of course, it might still be wise to avoid driving through Cincinnati tonight because of said storm.

 

Original post:

Heading south beyond Cincinnati on Friday night or Saturday? If so, this will be a good time to use the I-275 bypass around the city instead of taking the shorter route on I-75, because I-75 is likely to be a mess.

The Ohio Department of Transportation is in the midst of a major makeover for I-75 from Mitchell Avenue on south, and this weekend, southbound I-75 traffic will be shifted onto new pavement near the Hopple Street and Western Hills Viaduct interchanges (Exits 3 and 2, respectively).

That means two of four lanes will be closed from 9 p.m. tonight until 6 a.m. Sunday, along with several ramp closings at the two interchanges.

ODOT is urging motorists to use alternate routes, and for through traffic, I-275 is the obvious choice. State Rt. 561 east to I-71 south is another possibility.

That Sunday morning reopening, however, means that if you’re headed to the Cincinnati Bengals game in the afternoon, these particular lane closings should be all done -- just be on the lookout for other drivers who may not be expecting changes in the I-75 layout through the work zone.

Extra lane closings, detours on I-75 and I-475 this weekend

Two weeks after flipping the traffic pattern in the eastbound I-475 work zone, ODOT will be doing the same this weekend on the westbound side.

From 10 p.m. today until 5 a.m. Saturday, the northbound I-75 exit to westbound I-475 will be closed, with traffic detoured via the Phillips interchange. Once that reopens, the southbound I-75 exit to westbound I-475 will be closed until about 1 p.m. Sunday, with traffic detoured via the Detroit interchange.

During this entire time, westbound I-475 will be down to one lane from I-475 to Monroe, and the ProMedica Parkway westbound entrance will be closed.

If you’re visiting downtown Toledo for the Farmers’ Market or whatever other purpose on Saturday or Sunday morning, surface streets like Monroe or Sylvania Avenue might be a better choice to get home. This is especially true if you use the Douglas exit, which will be closed intermittently for paving.

Also from 10 tonight until 5 a.m. Saturday, northbound I-75 will be down to one lane after Dorr Street for sign replacement, with complete closings of up to 15 minutes scattered throughout that period. Through traffic should use State Rt. 795 or Miami, Oak, and Front streets to get to northbound I-280 to avoid possible delay.

Just in case that's not enough, the exit from northbound I-75 to northbound I-475/U.S. 23 in Perrysburg also will be closed Saturday. ODOT is taking soil samples from the ramp embankment and the drilling equipment blocks the entire roadway. Use I-75 north to U.S. 20/23 and then return to I-475 on the southbound side.

Keep your wheels straight while waiting to turn left

The fatal crash Tuesday on Central Avenue at Herr Road in Sylvania Township is far from the first time I’ve heard of motorists being hit from behind and pushed into oncoming traffic. I vividly remember the first, on Connecticut Route 66 just east of Portland, Conn., more than 20 years ago when I was a cub reporter with a newspaper in a nearby city.

I don’t recall anyone getting killed that time, but the driver who got pushed was seriously injured. And that has been the usual minimum outcome any time I have covered or heard of such a crash since then, because such crashes are usually close to head-on.

Such crashes vividly illustrate the lesson from a driving instructor who told my driver’s ed class in high school that when waiting to make a left turn, keep your steering wheel straight until you’re ready to go. That way, if you get hit from behind, you’ll be pushed forward instead of into oncoming traffic. And there’s always oncoming traffic when that happens -- otherwise, why were you waiting?

My father never got  that lesson, apparently, because not only did he angle his steering wheel toward the left when waiting to turn, he developed the even more dangerous habit of slowly creeping into the turn, often crossing the center line, under the theory that it would allow him to turn faster once an opportunity presented itself and might even induce an opposing motorist to stop and let him go first.

Funny, I don’t remember anyone ever obliging him in the latter respect. He didn’t accept driving advice from his kids, either. Fortunately, he also never got hit.

But it’s a lesson that bears repeating. Whatever minimal time advantage one might get out of setting up for a left turn is vastly overwhelmed by the tragic consequences of getting rear-ended in that position.

Crash shines light on wrong-way bicycling

When I was young, I was taught that when walking along a road with no sidewalks, I should walk on the side facing traffic. I presume this was to give me the ability to get out of the way if something went sideways with a driver and to be aware, in general, of traffic.

Unfortunately, some people appear to have gotten this same advice for riding bicycles, and it just isn’t the same.

Bicyclists who ride on the left shoulder scare the heck out of me as a driver, in part because of the potential for crashes like this one in Perrysburg Township on Thursday to happen. But a wrong-way cyclist doesn't have to fall onto the road first to be a hazard.

When a car driver is out on the road and comes up behind a cyclist, proper driving requires treating that cyclist like any other vehicle: slow down, if necessary, until a safe passing opportunity arises.

But when one encounters a wrong-way cyclist and there’s also oncoming traffic in the other lane, what exactly is a driver supposed to do? With closing traffic on both sides, it may not be possible to slow down enough to avoid a tragedy, and in that case, the obvious choice is to hit the bicycle rather than collide head-on with another car.

It doesn’t help that many rural roads in northwest Ohio lack shoulders wide enough for cyclists to use. But those are the roads where wrong-way cycling is most dangerous, and they aren’t likely to get shoulders any time soon.

Yes, there are bad drivers out there who carry the attitude that bikes should be on the sidewalk, or just go away entirely. They’re wrong. Bicycles have every right to the road that cars do.

But for cyclists, that means obeying the same rules of the road. Keep to the right. Always.

Work zone crash memorial displayed on Ohio Turnpike through next week

A memorial to workers, motorists, and others killed in work-zone crashes was placed on exhibit Friday at an Ohio Turnpike service plaza between Toledo and Cleveland and will be open to the public through Sept. 22.

Nearly 1,400 names are listed on the plaques that have been set up in a storefront at the Vermilion Valley service plaza near Amherst, Ohio -- Milepost 139.5 eastbound, or about 75 miles east of the I-75 interchange in Rossford.

"The Ohio Turnpike is pleased to be hosting this memorial wall, not only as a reminder to motorists to use caution when traveling in work zones, but also to honor some of our own who have lost their lives while performing their duties on the Ohio Turnpike," said Rick Hodges, the toll road's executive director.

One of the most recent local work-zone casualties was Forest John Fletcher, 53, of Perrysburg, an assistant foreman at the Turnpike's Elmore maintenance base who was killed Jan. 24, 2012, when a tractor trailer barreled through cones and crashed into several vehicles at a bridge-repair site near Fremont. Two other Turnpike maintenance workers were seriously injured. Truck driver Edward Mills, 54, of Doylestown, Ohio pleaded guilty 13 months later to vehicular homicide, a first-degree misdemeanor.

The National Work Zone Memorial has been exhibitied so far at 50 sites across the United States. It lists the names of construction workers, motorists, law-enforcement officers, and public-safety officials who have died in work-zone crashes nationwide.

Secor getting cut into already?

So the work on Secor Road wasn’t totally, totally done after all.

Blade colleague T.K. Barger sent me a what-the-heck email at lunchtime today, asking why the freshly paved, rebuilt street at Secor and Central Avenue already was being cut into.

The response from the city: the cutting was related to adjustment of two manholes for an AT&T telecommunications vault beneath Secor near Central. AT&T had been expected to do that work a few weeks ago, but it (or its contractor) only just got around to it today.

“It's not going to affect the new pavement in that these adjustments were supposed to be cut out as a part of AT&T's work. It is unfortunate in their timing,” said Steve Hamilton, the city’s project liaison.

We’ve also gotten a complaint about the rough condition of westbound Glendale Avenue west of Detroit Avenue following sewer construction there.

I was previously told that the city plans to repave the affected lanes once the work is all done, but have requested confirmation today. The results of my inquiry will appear either in this space or in the Road Warrior column on Monday (Sept. 16).

(Old) U.S. 24 named among nation's most dangerous roads

For the first time since last summer's opening of the new U.S. 24 expressway opened between the north side of Waterville and Napoleon, I drove the old road along the banks of the Maumee River on a recent Sunday afternoon, as far as the State Rt. 109 bridge south of Liberty Center. It was a very pleasant ride, what with the Ohio Department of Transportation having repaved the whole thing recently as part of its transfer to operation by Lucas and Henry counties, and with nary a big rig in sight. I hadn't forgotten the trip I took with a local truck driver over to the Indiana suburbs and back, when traffic on U.S. 24 was an entirely different story.

So it was with some amusement today that I opened a Facebook link from a friend that led me to a Popular Mechanics feature about "10 of America's Most Dangerous Roads" and specifically Item No. 9, U.S. 24 from Fort Wayne to Toledo. This entry is outdated, in a way, with Napoleon-Waterville being the last section of two-lane U.S. 24 on the "Fort to Port Highway" to be finished in Ohio, and the rest of it in Indiana completed later last year. But it was certainly a deadly road in its day, not so much because of its geometry but rather driver impatience or inattention.

Most of the crashes I covered over the years involved drivers who either didn't stay in their lane, made unsafe turns, were hit from behind while stopped waiting to turn (or for someone ahead to turn), or attempted to pass one of U.S. 24's convoys of tractor-trailers at inopportune moments. Tractor-trailer traffic boomed on U.S. 24 during the mid-1990s after I-469 opened around Fort Wayne, giving truckers an easy bypass around city streets and a shorter, cheaper route between the Toledo area and Indianapolis. The Popular Mechanics article quotes The Blade's coverage of the vehicular carnage that followed, and also remarks that U.S. 24 "became known as 'the killway' " -- a term coined in the newspaper's editorial office to crystallize calls for a four-lane expressway. Construction began in earnest in the Defiance area in 2004, more than four decades after discussions about a new U.S. 24 began.

Popular Mechanics acknowledges the new highway's completion late last year, so the coverage is unlikely to attract any bad-road thrill-seekers who would then be disappointed by the tranquility that now characterizes Old 24, now downgraded to County Road 53 in Lucas County and County Road 424 in Henry. It's also worth noting the title's precise wording: it doesn't pretend to name U.S. 24 as one of the "10 worst," which might have required some sort of statistical proof, but just "10 of the worst." But this surely will be one of the last articles published anywhere that identifies U.S. 24 near Toledo in the present tense as a dangerous road, rather than as a piece of the region's transportation history.

Ridin' that gas-price roller coaster

While running an errand Monday evening in South Toledo, I noticed gas for $3.129 per gallon at a BP at Reynolds and Heatherdowns and for $3.149 per gallon at several other nearby stations. Since that was more than a dime less than anywhere else I had seen that day, and well below prevailing prices in the $3.30s and $3.40s throughout town, I quickly looped around and filled up. In fact, after taking my wife out to dinner at a nearby restaurant that evening, I even stopped back to top off, telling her I was sure prices would go up on Tuesday because the spread in the local market had become so great.
I'm not always right with predictions like that, but sure enough, higher prices started popping up Tuesday morning. While the stations at Woodville and Nevada in East Toledo were still in the $3.20s shortly before 10 a.m., the Sunoco up the street near Toledo Refining had bumped up to $3.559, and by lunchtime the BP at Front and Main was asking $3.659. That's no higher than the price from the last jump a couple of weeks ago -- when, if I recall correctly, the prevailing local price went to $3.699 per gallon -- but I'm sure it made a few folks unhappy for having failed to fill up when a lower price was available.
Twenty-four hours later, I've yet to get the "how can prices go up so much in one day?" phone call, but I'm sure it's coming. The answer hasn't changed: Toledo, and really most of the Midwest, has a competitive, and thus volatile, retail gasoline market. There are lots of brands, and people will cross the street or otherwise drive out of their way to save a penny a gallon. This competition slowly forces prices down in competitive areas until they actually go below wholesale, with retailers trying to make up the loss on sales of overpriced candy bars and such.
Finally, one of the dominant players in the market -- around here, that's usually Marathon Oil's Speedway chain -- decides its price has gone down far enough and jacks it back up, and everybody follows. This sounds like illegal price-fixing to some people, but unless it can be proven that competitors are formally agreeing amongst themselves to rig prices this way, rather than just responding to each other's actions, there's really nothing to be done except deal with the price roller-coaster ride. I cope in part by keeping a couple of jerry cans in my garage and filling them up when prices are low, then using that gas instead of buying from a filling station if I need fuel right after a price spike. Five gallons isn't much, but it's often enough to last me a few days while the price starts creeping back down again.
By the way, the last few significant price increases in the area have all occurred on Tuesdays. So if you see a relatively low price on a Monday, it's not a bad idea to fill up. Sure, the price could go down a few cents more on Tuesday, but if it goes up, it's likely to go up a lot more than that. That's the way the game is played around here.

Secor Road paving not quite done yet

This Secor Road update from the city just came across my in-box, and it's pretty self-explanatory:

The Best Made Plans

The optimism of last week was tempered this week by reality.

A number of unforeseen factors (including a power outage at the asphalt plant earlier this week) have made it impossible to finish the paving operations by today as scheduled.

Paving operations will continue tonight on the outside lanes but will stop early AM on Saturday. No paving will occur on Saturday afternoon or Sunday.

The middle lanes are now scheduled to be paved next Monday night.

After temporary striping is performed on Tuesday - all lanes should be reopened to traffic. 

Work to pave the intersecting roadways and major parking lot entrances will proceed after that, as well as other minor work items, such as permanent thermoplastic striping and manhole adjustments.

Lots of orange barrels in Detroit this weekend

Toledoans heading to metro Detroit this weekend should plan to avoid several key construction zones.

The biggest deal is a shutdown of I-696 between I-96/I-275 in Novi and the Mixing Bowl interchange (I-696/U.S. 24/M-10) in Southfield from Friday night through 5 a.m. Monday. Traffic will be detoured via M-5, Eight Mile (M-102) and U.S. 24. Expect traffic to be mess on the detour route as well as on roads leading toward the closed section of I-696. In other words, just stay away from that part of Oakland County.

Nighttime will be an especially messy time to get through Detroit, because the MDOT geniuses also plan to have overnight double-lane closings in an I-75 paving zone between I-94 and Seven Mile. The southbound side will be the big problem -- between Davison and Holbrook tonight, and between Holbrook and Piquette tomorrow night.

So if you're headed to the Somerset Collection, Pine Knob, or somewhere near the Palace, be sure to be out of there by 8 p.m.