As I mentioned yesterday, I attended the 70/71 Split Fix “Stakeholder Meeting Announcement” last night. I’ve posted the overview of what went down over here on Columbus Underground, which should give you a pretty good idea of what transpired. ODOT presented the plan…. everyone was unhappy with the plan… ODOT seemed to be listening. More importantly, officials in the audience with city government, county government, and other local stakeholders were also listening. I came away a bit frustrated by what was presented, but optimistic that the right people were in the room last night to start to make not only some detail changes on this project, but an overall mindset shift on what exactly it is that we’re doing here.
Someone at the meeting (can’t recall who, but I think it was Kathy Fox) summed it up very well when they said that this is a once-in-a-generation project in front of us. We may not have another chance at this for another 50 years. We absolutely must make sure that we’re doing what’s best for the community not just in terms of highway automobile traffic projections in 10 years, but also for what these neighborhoods are going to have to live with for the next 50 or 60 years.
Personally, I’m bummed that the highway caps have been axed from the project. Just two years ago, around $22 million was pledged for creating highway caps similar to what we have at the High Street bridge over 670 in between the Short North and Convention Center, but all of that is missing from the project. It’s nice to know that they’re constructing the retainment walls so that caps can be added later on if new funding were to become available, but unless they’re planning on planting money trees along these new roadways, I really don’t see that happening until the City of Columbus decides to pony up the cash for them.
I’ve still got a lot of thoughts and ideas racing around in my head on this from last night, so I’m still not 100% sure what the next steps are. I do know that you can send your own feedback direct to Ferzan Ahmed, Project Manager at ODOT here: Ferzan.Ahmed@dot.state.oh.us. Let him know what you think of the split fix.
I’m going to try to have some of the renderings and images from last night posted up if I can get them sent over soon. Stay tuned for more.