Saturday, September 18, 1999
Miami board backs plan to reroute trucks
BY RANDY McNUTT
The Cincinnati Enquirer
OXFORD — Miami University's board of trustees supports a proposal to reroute trucks around Oxford and extend Ohio 63 west toward the city.
“Truck traffic is a safety hazard for students,” said Holly Wissing, a Miami spokeswoman. “It also affects the uptown business district and damages the roads. Obviously, the university is concerned.”
On Friday, trustees passed a resolution supporting the project, called the Ohio 63 Corridor Study, which would include a U.S. 27 bypass around Oxford.
Ultimately, Butler County Engineer Dean Foster would like to see Ohio 63 extended from Monroe to Oxford, with bypasses at Trenton and Oxford.
The highway now ends at Ohio 4 in Monroe, near Americana Amusement Park.
“It's conceivable that in less than 10 years we'll be able to drive on this (entire road),” Mr. Foster said in a telephone interview Friday.
But first, the state must approve both parts of the plan, and provide the money.
On Oct. 1, Mr. Foster will
ask the Ohio Transportation Review Advisory Council to give the first part of the project a top priority rating, which he said means it would likely receive funding.
If approved, Mr. Foster said, construction could start on the Trenton section in 2004, at a cost of $40 million.
The second part of the project, running from U.S. 127 to Oxford, would cost about $60 million, he said.
According to a study conducted by Oxford in March, a truck passes through Miami's campus once every 47 seconds and 64,000 pedestrians cross the street every day in Oxford, Ms. Wissing said.
With the corridor study, officials are considering ways to alleviate Oxford's truck problem, and some other traffic problems in northern Butler County. They are studying various bypass and extension options, using either new highways or existing roads.
“Getting the trucks out of Oxford could be accomplished with a bypass (on the south side of town),” said Chris Petrocy, a spokesman for the Butler County engineer. “This corridor could also eliminate some traffic on Ohio 73 (going to Oxford).”
Drivers going from Middletown to Oxford must now take Ohio 73, get off on U.S. 127 and go north and then resume traveling west on Ohio 73, to Oxford.
“Route 73 winds, it's dangerous,” Ms. Wissing said.
For a number of years, there's been talk about creating a U.S. 27 bypass around Oxford to reduce truck traffic, said Mike Juengling, Butler County's planning director.
“As the county engineers considered it, they decided to do a study to connect the two — a bypass around Oxford and a connection to 63,” he said.
Most of the trucks in the area are trying to get to U.S. 127 and Interstate 75, so they can drive north to I-70, Mr. Petrocy said.
Last August, Oxford and Miami agreed to work together to try to remove U.S. 27 truck traffic from the uptown business district and campus. “If we do anything there (uptown), we first have to move the truck traffic away from downtown,” City Manager Mark Roath said.
This summer, the city started a business-district improvement project, designed to help stimulate business uptown by adding storm sewers, repaving streets and making other improvements.
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