Road Warrior

Construction advisories beyond metro Toledo

The holiday travel story in Friday's Blade covered the major construction issues in and near Toledo for Memorial Day weekend, but for those going a bit farther, here are a few more tips.

The biggest potential hassle appears to be on southbound I-75 in Saginaw, Michigan. It's closed between the two I-675 interchanges for reconstruction. MDOT advises travelers headed home from the Upper Peninsula or other points north of Grayling to use U.S. 127 instead. I-75 south of the Bay City area is likely to be a parking lot Monday afternoon, based on the heavy traffic I have seen up there on holiday weekends.

I have used U.S. 127 via Lansing and Jackson, and U.S. 223 across Lenawee County, for trips like this, but if planning to go this way, remember that U.S. 23 will be jammed up at U.S. 223 on Monday.

In Ohio, lanes are closed on I-75 through Dayton, which could be troublesome during peak hours. A work zone through Lima has a reduced speed limit but two lanes are open both ways. On several other Interstates in Ohio, be aware of split-lane traffic in which the left lane is crossed over to the highway's opposite side to maintain two lanes each way during major construction. This pattern is set up on I-90 east of Cleveland, among other places.

Besides the work zone in Fulton County, the Ohio Turnpike could be congested near Fremont, where one of three lanes is closed in both directions for a reconstruction project. Backups should not be as bad as in Fulton County, but there could be delays at peak times.

Speed Limit 70

Some more specifics from the Ohio Department of Transportation today about the sections of I-75 in northwest Ohio that will have a 70-mph speed limit come July 1.

The location "just outside of Toledo" where the hammer can go down just a bit farther is Milepost 191, or about a mile south of the I-475/US-23 junction in Perrysburg. The 70-mph zone will run 30 miles south to MP161, just north of Findlay, and resume at MP151 south of the US-68 junction south of town. In the Lima area, the current 65-mph speed limit will remain from MP-130, near the Bluelick Road interchange, to MP-117, near the Cridersville interchange.

The 70-mph zone south of Cridersville will extend to Milepost 75, which is just north of Troy. The 65-mph limit will remain in effect the rest of the way to the Ohio River.

Legislation allowing the 70-mph limit on rural freeways in Ohio specifically applies to Interstates, so freeways like US-24 southwest of Toledo to Napoleon and State Rt. 2 east of Camp Perry will continue to have a 65-mph limit. The Ohio Turnpike raised its speed limit to 70 several years ago. Also excluded are urban-beltway Interstates, like I-280 and I-475 in metro Toledo, for which existing speed limits will be maintained.

Not quite the Mile High Club, but close

Flight delays apparently caused by Sequester-related furloughs may be a nuisance for some air travelers, but an Internet dating site geared toward airport hookups says others are putting their newly-found spare time to, um, work.

MeetAtTheAirport.com says its traffic has increased by 800 percent during the past few days, and membership signups in Washington and New York, where some of the worst delays have occurred, have tripled.

"Airports are a great place to meet other singles," according to a Web site statement reporting the increases. "And making a 'hot connection' before, or between flight connections, is now easier than ever. With so much wasted time due to flight dalays ... sitting alone at the bar or eating junk food is no longer the best option."

The Web site matches users using their travel itineraries, identifying travelers who have scheduled layovers at the same time at the same airport. MeetAtTheAirport.com says it now has more than 80,000 registered members. Its news release does not say how many of them are actually single.

"MeetAtTheAirport.com is quickly taking off with travelers who are looking for love or other interesting connections at hubs all around the world," the site's statement says.

Secor Road water line is finished

Installation of the new water main along Secor Road between Central Avenue and Monroe Street has been finished, Secor project liaison Steve Hamilton announced today, with the pipe having been tested both for pressure and sanitary condition.

Crews will begin hooking up service lines to businesses along Secor on Friday. The hookups will require one-hour service shutdowns, but no boil-water advisories, Mr. Hamilton said.

A connecting main along Executive Parkway remains to be installed, and its service connections will be made later. Those connections will involve boil-water periods.

Alas, rebuilding of Secor itself has a long way to go, and the right lane remains closed on westbound Central at Secor, too.

We've been told traffic delays on Secor have been predictably horrendous since its reconstruction began last month, and Central also has had some pretty bad backups because of lane closings at the Secor intersection. So if you don't have business to conduct in the Central-Secor area, it's a good area to avoid.

 

Illegal parking, and traffic mayhem, at Muni Court

If Toledo police are ever going to resume regular parking enforcement, their starting point should be just up the block from headquarters: Erie Street in front of Toledo Municipal Court. They could also write some obstructing-traffic citations to drivers who stop in the active travel lanes to let lazy passengers out.

Traffic behavior in front of that courthouse is a nightmare in the morning. I guess it shouldn't be surprising, since one presumes that many headed there are involved in court cases attributable to bad driving. But the illegal parking out front only makes it worse, as it induces those drivers unwilling to go farther away to drop their passengers off to stop right in Erie Street's active lanes -- often the left lane, from which passengers brazenly exit out the right-hand side door into the center lane, like the person in the picture did Tuesday morning. That often prompts traffic in the center lane to stop, too. Yep, that car behind him got to sit and stew while this was going on, but in other cases, those drivers stuck behind the dropper-offers simply veer into one of the other lanes. I nearly got creamed by somebody doing just that about 5 minutes earlier without checking his mirrors first, which is why I walked back over to the courthouse with a camera after parking. It didn't take me long to find various forms of traffic violations there, and it shouldn't be taking TPD so long to do something about it before somebody gets hit.

Of course, building the Toledo Municipal Court on the left side of a one-way street with no drop-off area was a ridiculously stupid idea, but that's water over the dam now. If the muni court building is ever replaced, put it in a better spot, OK?

Dead ends that aren't

"So you make a right on Sherwood, and take that until it dead-ends at River, and make a left...."

Where did this use of the term "dead end" come from? It seems to be a Midwestern, if not strictly Toledo, vernacular. But it's wrong. A street ending at a "T" intersection is not a dead end. If anything, it's a "live" end.

The picture here, from the Swanton area, shows what a dead end really is. It's a road that ends with no intersection, no turnaround -- it just stops. Even a cul-de-sac isn't truly a dead end.

I'm probably not going to bring a dead end to the term's misuse, but really, if there's an intersection, it's not a dead end.

Can anyone tell me how this particular usage ever got started?

In Toledo, there is free lunch ... parking

I have a monthly pass to park at the Vistula garage, near The Blade, but on nice days when I think I might want to drive somewhere during my hour lunch break, I'll often check for an open spot at one of the parking meters closer to the office, just to save the few minutes' walk to the garage, when I arrive downtown at about 10 a.m. Quite often a spot is open, and even better, there's usually time left on the meter. What amazes me is how much time is left on the meter.

Maybe once every other week, there is well over an hour worth of parking time left, which for the parking authority is pure bonus cash. I understand why some folks headed for downtown meetings or court appearances pay more into the meters than they end up using -- and I thank you very much for that time when I show up and vulture the leftovers. But here's a friendly Road Warrior reminder: parking in downtown Toledo remains free between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., as well as the other 15 hours of the day not covered by the signs and all day on weekends and holidays. That means that if you park at a downtown meter at 9:25 a.m., putting $2 in the meter gives you absolutely no more benefit than if you put in $1.50, which buys you the 90 minutes (plus the five-minute grace period) you need to get to 11 a.m. The last 50 cents is just gravy for the parking authority and, while I have nothing against them, don't you really have a better use for that money?

It should go without saying that there's no need to feed the meter during the lunch break, but I occasionally see people paying anyway. Often, their cars have out-of-town plates, so I imagine they're just unfamiliar with Toledo's lunchtime freebie, even though it is stated on the meters themselves as well as the signs. I also get why someone arriving downtown at, say, 1:45 p.m. would pay the meter then, even though pay time doesn't start again until 2: it might not be possible to be there right at 2 when the meters go live again.

The parking authority officially states that the addition of a smart-phone payment option for the meters will be revenue neutral, but I hope they'll be tracking that to see how it actually works out. I suspect the net effect will be a revenue loss, because fewer people will get those $10 overtime-parking tickets once they've extended their time electronically. A 35-cent fee is certainly better than getting stuck for a tenner, isn't it? On the other hand, smart-phone parking will increase the revenue from parking vultures like me, because unused time paid for by smart-phone customers won't appear on the meters like it does if payment was from coins, credit cards, or "smart keys". This does lead me to wonder if the smart-phone system will allow customers to overpay (past 11 or 5) the way some do with coins.

 

The "pedestrian" bridge over I-475 at Douglas

Four summers ago, the Ohio Department of Transportation replaced the Douglas Road bridge over I-475 as a preparatory step toward the freeway reconstruction project in that same area -- the on-going project ODOT expects to substantially complete late this year.

But before the Douglas bridge could be replaced, fiber-optic telecommunications cables that crossed I-475 beneath that structure had to be rerouted. And thus was built, for AT&T's benefit and at its expense, a separate bridge that some folks apparently think was intended to be a footbridge, despite occasional reporting to the contrary.

When utility companies arrange to lay their pipes or cables underneath public roads and bridges, they do so with the understanding that relocation might be necessary during construction projects.
Such is the situation with AT&T fiber-optic cables running under the Douglas Road bridge over I-475 in West Toledo - a bridge that the Ohio Department of Transportation will demolish and replace, beginning in May, as a prelude to future freeway widening.
Since late October, the telecommunications company has been building its own bridge for its cables to bypass the Douglas bridge.
(The above is from The Blade on Dec. 3, 2008. At right is a picture of the utility bridge being built that ran with the story.)

So yes, there's a reason why the skinny bridge with the fences all over it next to Douglas Road has never been connected to a sidewalk, or otherwise opened to the public. And no taxpayer dollars were wasted by its construction.

It does strike me as somewhat overbuilt for its purpose, but perhaps all the fences on it are intended to keep people from getting onto it, but if they do, then more fences are needed to keep them from falling onto the freeway. In other words, it's a big liability-avoidance exercise on AT&T's part.

An anniversary blizzard for the East Coast?

Last week I recounted my experience with the East Coast's version of the Blizzard of 1978 -- an entirely different storm than the one Ohioans remember. Well, it's starting to look like the Boston area is going to get a reprise just slightly off the 35th anniversary of that epic storm. Forecasters say eastern Massachusetts may get one to two feet of snow Friday into Saturday; that area's Blizzard of 1978 occurred on Feb. 6 and 7, 1978, but cleanup lasted for days thereafter.

Six to 12 inches could fall over much of the rest of New England, while 3 to 6 inches are forecast for a broad swath reaching back from central Maine across much of New York state to Port Huron and Grand Rapids, Mich. But Toledo is expected to get maybe an inch or three, starting Thursday afternoon, with sleet and/or rain mixing in for the first few hours. It may be a little sloppy around here for a while, but forecasters do not expect this to be a big deal in northern Ohio.

If you're flying anywhere this weekend, expect delays and cancellations because of airport problems in the Northeast. Driving on I-75 north of, say, Flint could be tricky on Thursday, and is probably not advisable on I-90 anywhere east of Erie, Pa., on Friday.

 

Slippery Toledo streets Thursday morning

Rapidly cooling temperatures Thursday morning caught Toledo's streets division off-guard, a city spokesman acknowledged later in the day.

While the division of Streets, Bridges, and Harbor had "bridge route" patrols on duty to protect against so-called "black ice" on bridge decks, officials did not expect moisture lingering after Wednesday's heavy rain to make regular pavement slick as the mercury plunged overnight, said Jen Sorgenfrei, a spokesman for Mayor Mike Bell.

"We got a little caught off guard by how quickly the streets slicked over," Ms. Sorgenfrei said. Among those complaining, she said, was Deputy Mayor Steve Herwat, who called in Thursday morning to ask why city salt trucks weren't out.

By midday, the spokesman said, salt trucks had covered all of Toledo's major streets, but that was a bit late for several people who called The Blade reporting they had slipped and slid on icy Monroe Street earlier in the day.

Theresa Pollick, the Ohio Department of Transportation's district spokesman in Bowling Green, said her agency had a full complement of about three dozen trucks assigned after midnight to cover metro Toledo. But the freeways and rural highways didn't become slick, she said, because high winds during the evening helped moisture on those exposed roadways evaporate quickly.