By Jennifer Edwards
The Cincinnati Enquirer

WEST CHESTER TWP. - Brace yourself: Traffic on one of the Tristate's most congested roads is about to get worse - but just for the weekend.

Tylersville Road at Cox Roadwill shut down tonight through the weekend as workers complete a $4.3 million county construction project.

The 2,800-foot-long closure along Tylersville is necessary to allow crews to grind down old pavement, resurface and add lane striping to the intersection, according to the Butler County Engineer's Office.

Closing Tylersville at Cox might seem ludicrous, but the only alternative was to reduce Tylersville - which carries more than 50,000 vehicles a day - to one lane each way for about two weeks while the work was done.

"When they told me that, I choked," said traffic Sgt. Barry Walker of West Chester police. "We're sitting there thinking, 'Do we want traffic snarled for two weeks on Tylersville or two days?' We all agreed we would rather have a two-day problem than a two-week nightmare."

The intersection will shut down from 8 p.m. tonight through 6 a.m. Monday. Businesses along Cox will be accessible to motorists off Hamilton-Mason Road only, while businesses along Tylersville near Cox Road will be accessible only via Cox just south of the intersection.

Then on Monday, Hamilton-Mason at Cox will be closed for most of the week as similar work occurs in that area.

Cox will be open to businesses, but through traffic from Tylersville will not be permitted.

Motorists should detour onto Butler-Warren and Cincinnati-Dayton roads, Kingsgate Way and Ohio 129.

West Chester police are doubling patrols this weekend in the area to direct traffic and try to ease gridlock and confusion, Walker said.

"We expect a lot of congestion," he conceded. "In four days, we counted about 85,000 total cars traveling through the Cox-Tylersville intersection."

Because the closing is expected to pour cars onto surrounding arteries to other communities and has the potential to clog Interstate 75 ramps off Tylersville, assistance will be provided by ARTIMIS (Advanced Regional Traffic Interactive Management and Information System).

The roadwork marks the end of a Butler County project that began a year ago to widen Cox Road between Tylersville and Hamilton-Mason from two lanes to five.

The project also included new, 500-foot-long turn lanes along Tylersville at Cox that are expected to relieve congestion, at least for a while, as commercial development explodes.

A $100 million medical complex recently opened adjacent to I-75 along Cox, and a 500,000-square-foot Target will open in July. Mitchell's Salon & Day Spa opened a 13,000-square-foot, $5 million building Thursday on Cox.

But the roadwork isn't expected to dampen Mitchell's grand opening weekend. Appointment books were full Thursday and continued brisk business is expected, said Sherry Williams, Mitchell's vice president of client relations.

"We'll get through it. We are worth getting to," Williams said. "West Chester is just growing tremendously and is such a great area. We feel very fortunate to have been able to build here."

For details on traffic conditions and detours, go to the Butler County engineer's Web site at www.bceo.org or to the Artimis site at www.artimis.org.

E-mail: jedwards@enquirer.com.