Friday, October 01, 1999
State riding brakes on remedies for Ohio 73
BY RICHELLE THOMPSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
WAYNESVILLE — At a suburban Dayton nursing home, 41-year-old James Benner Jr. is learning how to pull up his pants, tie his shoes and cut his steak with only one hand.
Three to four hours a day, he works to flex the muscles of his paralyzed left side. Mr. Benner, who has been engaged since before his car wrapped around a telephone pole along Ohio 73 on Sept. 30, 1998, still hopes to some day walk down the aisle.
Yet even with his injuries, Mr. Benner considers himself lucky. A police officer initially thought he was dead, another victim of the 13-mile stretch of Ohio 73 where eight people have died since 1993.
“I couldn't think of a more dangerous road with more hazardous aspects,” Warren County Engineer Neil Tunison said.
With the support of residents, business owners, local officials and members of the Ohio 73 Coalition, Mr. Tunison today will ask the Trans portation Review Advisory Council, an arm of the Ohio Department of Transportation, to approve a $60 million project to expand the northern Warren County road to three lanes.
The proposal also calls for widening the slim shoulders, increasing sight distance and improving the intersections.
For four years, the Ohio 73 Coalition has prodded local and state officials to improve the roads. So far, their pleas have fallen on deaf ears. An Ohio 73 expansion project is not included in the 1998 updated transportation master plan of the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments, said Dory Montazemi, deputy executive director.
The master plan “represents $8 billion worth of proj ects over the next 20 years,” he said. “Hundreds of projects are pitched. We just can't choose all of them.”
Priority is given to roads straining to meet traffic demands or those that will spur economic development. Although the 10,000 cars and trucks that travel Ohio 73 daily is triple the volume in 1970, congestion is generally not an issue.
Further, most of Ohio 73 is a ribbon between old country homes and large residential lots. Only in Waynesville is the proposed expansion seen as an economic development tool. The village in 1998 annexed 500 acres to develop an industrial and commercial park along Ohio 73.
Waynesville Village Manager Kevin Harper has heard the excuses against an Ohio 73 expansion. He doesn't understand them.
“Unfortunately, I think the more glamorous projects like Fort Washington Way tend to attract the money, while the less glamorous projects like Ohio 73 get left by the wayside,” Mr. Harper said. “We're talking about traffic safety. We're talking about people being killed. ... I don't want to minimize economic development's importance, but safety should always be No. 1.”
According to records from the Ohio Highway Patrol and the state's Department of Public Safety, six fatal accidents have occurred since 1993 on the 13 miles of Ohio 73 between Ohio 741 and Interstate 71.
About 10,000 cars and trucks a day travel Ohio 73 at Springboro's eastern city limits.
In contrast, Greater Cincinnati's 88-mile beltway, Interstate 275, has recorded 24 fatal crashes in the past five years. Traffic counts on I-275 range up to 136,050 at Ohio 747 in Springdale, near I-75.
Mr. Tunison considers Ohio 73 an unforgiving road that poses multiple hazards.
Most shoulders are 6 to 12 inches. The federal government mandates a 10-foot paved shoulder on new construction of roads with 55-mph speed limits, the same speed limit as on Ohio 73.
Police have problems enforcing traffic laws on Ohio 73 for some of the same reasons the road is dangerous to drivers, said Ohio Highway Patrol Sgt. Ken Watson. Even if a trooper can get turned around quickly enough to go after a violator, “then you have to follow the (car) for five miles to find a spot where you're able to pull somebody over,” he said.
Because of safety concerns, Ohio 73 is the post's third-highest priority, behind Interstates 75 and 71.
Another problem on the road is its quick hills, the kind that thrill kids and terrorize most drivers.
Four-year-old Taylor Parsons likes to hold her arms up as if she's on a roller-coaster when her mom, Rhonda, drives down the road.
“We live on top of a dip. We watch and make sure nobody's at the other side,” Mrs. Parsons said. “Sometimes it's a close call.”
Those dips, and the road's curves, limit sight distance. While the state's standard for sight distance on a 55-mph road is 750 feet, drivers could only see 125 feet at the intersection of Red Lion-Five Points Road until last winter. The county ponied up $317,000 for improvements.
State routes don't fall under the jurisdiction of the county engineer, Mr. Tunison said. His job is to oversee the conditions of county roads and bridges. As a result, it's rare for Mr. Tunison to use county money for state roads.
“But we'll do it if there's a real need, and Ohio 73 meets a real need,” he said.
Mr. Tunison said he also has earmarked $40,000 of county money to pay for a feasibility study on the Ohio 73 expansion.
Getting approval for the entire $60 million price tag may be a long shot, Mr. Tunison conceded. He is shooting for Tier I status, which means that at least the first stages of the project would be funded within the next four years.
It needs to move ahead, he said. Northern Warren County already is growing at a rapid clip, with Springboro's population jumping 47 percent from 1990 to 1996 and Waynesville's up 24 percent in the same period.
Hoping to get a leg up on the fierce competition for federal and state dollars, local governments and businesses threw in $1,000 each, creating a pot of $11,000, to hire a Cincinnati public relations firm to help with today's presentation.
“We want the commission to understand this is an area that has been long-neglected,” said Wayneville Mayor Charles Sanders, who campaigned to improve the road. He led the Ohio 73 Coalition's first meeting in April 1996.
If funding is approved, Mr. Tunison said, the first priority is the 1.5 miles between Ohio 48 and Bunnell Hill Road. Sight distance is about half the state standard, and records show it's the intersection with the most accidents, Mr. Tunison said.
From Mr. Benner's vantage point at Bunnell Hill, both ways looked clear when he started across Ohio 73.
Robert L. Jordan had just dumped a load of concrete at a nearby subdivision and was heading east at about 45 miles per hour. As he neared Bunnell Hill, Mr. Jordan held his foot to the brake, ""because I know this is a bad intersection,” he told police.
He was three or four car lengths from the intersection when he saw Mr. Benner's black Mercury Tracer.
Mr. Benner doesn't remember the crash that threw his car across the street, into a stop sign and curled around a utility pole.
“It's hard to see there,” Mr. Benner said of the intersection. “You can't see all those big, heavy construction cars. It just needs to be safer.”
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