Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

This is part of an article from the SE Messenger:


Violet Twp. officials concerned about roads around U.S. 33

By Rick Palsgrove
Southeast Editor
Violet Township, Bloom Township, and Fairfield County officials plan to meet soon with the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) to discuss the roadways around the intersection of Pickerington Road and U.S. Route 33.
The roads in the area include Allen Road, Basil-Western Road and Busey Road among others.
At the Violet Township trustees?’ Sept. 6 meeting, Director of Operation Bill Yaple reported, ?“We need to determine among ourselves what improvements may be needed to those roads in the future. If the (traffic) lights are removed at Pickerington Road and U.S. 33, then we will meet with U.S. Representative David Hobson?’s office to discuss possible future funding while at the same time we will be discussing a meeting with ODOT as to offer help in resolving safety issues with the existing Pickerington Road/U.S. 33 intersection.?”
Added Yaple, ?“We need to know what will happen to these other roads when and if Pickerington Road at 33 closes.?”
Noting the problems the township had with various governmental agencies when improvements around the Hill/Diley interchange did not come to pass, Trustee Gary Weltlich commented, ?“I hope we learned our lesson from Hill/Diley.?”
The Pickerington Road/U.S. 33 intersection is one of several areas targeted by ODOT for improvements that will eventually eliminate intersecting roadways and make U.S. 33 a limited access highway from Hamilton Road southward. The total estimate for projects on this 12 mile stretch of U.S. 33 is $145 million.
As part of this project the intersection of Bowen Road/High Street and U.S. 33 was slated to close on Sept. 7 allowing only right/in/right out turns.
Additionally, ODOT closed Ebright Road on the south side of U.S. Route 33 on Sept. 6. Ebright Road on the north side of U.S. 33 closed in early August. The closures will remain until the Ebright Road overpass is completed in the summer of 2007. Motorists traveling to or from the south side of U.S. 33 may use Bixby Road as an alternate. Construction of the $6.4 million Ebright Road overpass began on July 24. The overpass when completed in 2007 will allow Ebright Road traffic to cross over U.S. 33.
The other ODOT projects along U.S. 33 include: Bixby Road interchange (2009); High Street/Bowen Road overpass (not yet scheduled); Pickerington Road interchange (not yet scheduled); and the Winchester Road/Carroll area interchange (under development). The Hill-Diley interchange has already been completed.


By Maverick

Cooperation begins with a vision

As a city resident I also have some concerns over the ramifications of the Pick Road/33 interchange. Have you ever had to drive through the old village during the time everyone is going to or coming from Central and Ridgeview? Have you ever had to try to drive around a Pet Parade on a football Friday night? Have you ever had to try to find a place to pull over when the fire department comes blasting out of Lockville Road?

What if you were to add to any of this all the more traffic that will be generated when Pick Road becomes one of the few access points to SR 33? When I look at the geography of the roadways that run north and south through Violet Township and the city I see a disaster waiting to happen. My opinion is that people exiting SR 33 to go north will end up driving all the way into town. What they will encounter when they get there should be of concern to all of us that have to use this area.

If you think about it, what has changed since the only vehicles using Pick Road, Hill Road and any of the downtown area were horses and buggies? Not too much. Hill Road is still nothing more than a tractor and hay wagon road and once you hit the city limits in Pick Road, horses and buggies would have a hard time passing each other. The Lockville Road and Columbus Street intersection is a joke and probably an example of what never to let happen at traffic engineer?’s conferences world-wide. Columbus St. and Hill Road, which by the way is a state route, is hysterical. Not only are the roads way too narrow for the type of traffic using it, the traffic lights and their control system seem to rank way up there with our tornado warning system. In other words, someone has to get out of bed to operate the darned things!

I don?’t know if any of you have noticed but there is a huge increase of Wal-Mart semis everywhere you look around town. Sure, some of this has to do with the construction on Diley Road but I truly believe this is a harbinger of things to come. The other day I was trying to turn north from the old village to go up Hill Road. There were two semis coming up by Ridgeview, one coming south on Hill to turn east on Columbus Street and one in front of me trying to turn right like I was to go up Hill. On of the northbound semis actually was tuning left on Columbus to apparently make his way back to Diley or something. These were all the 53 foot trailers, folks, not the in-town shorter trailers. Also the tractors were the long sleepers that looked more like RVs than semi trucks.

I am not lying here!!!

I couldn?’t see the driver of the truck in front of me but I saw the others and they were all big-eyed and laughing and having a good old time of it. Fortunately they were all professionals and since the Ridgeview/Central traffic had dissipated a mere 5 minutes earlier, it only took them about 10 minutes to all get through the intersection. Of course by then the car traffic had backed up in every direction. The cars coming south on Hill were backed up to the tracks, the northbound was backed up past Ridgeview and the Columbus Street traffic was likewise.

continued --

By Maverick

Lead, follow or get out of the..

Can you imagine if you added something to the mix? How about if busses were in the mix trying to turn the corners? How about if the fire department was responding to a call? What if a train was on the tracks or stopped? What if it was raining, or snowing, or dark, or, or, or?…..?

I have no doubt that our leaders have roadway improvements in all their improvement plans. I do doubt they are anything more than bookmarks on pages never to be read. ?“WE HAVE NO MONEY?” will be the claim. In many cases money is not the issue. In those cases what we will probably hear is that builders have put up so many houses that there is no room to improve streets.

I was a supporter of the Streetscape project in the old village. I even bought a brick. Looking back with my 20/20 hindsight I see what a fiasco that was. I believe we actually made the streets narrower in many cases.

It?’s time for our leaders to scrutinize more what they are spending our money on. Maybe it is time for our leaders, mainly the township to consider a road and bridge levy. Maybe it is time for all these talking heads to put aside their differences on ?“economic cooperation?” and instead focus on ?“transportation improvement cooperation?”. We may never be able to agree on the cooperative benefits of two or three little office buildings bringing a couple of thousand bucks of income tax to the area but we should all be able to agree that we have to drive through here and we have to be able to do it safely.

If only one councilman and a couple of his pals in the township can agree on economic cooperation then maybe it?’s time to put that on the back burner and look at all cooperative opportunities, prioritize them and begin working on those that no one can argue are the most important. Maybe this councilman and his pals in the township should stop telling us they need to meet in private so they don?’t have to answer a lot of questions from idiots like you ad me. Maybe the rest of council should get off their butts and start their own cooperative talks between the city and township and look at issues like transportation that affect us universally.

Maybe it?’s time for leaders and not followers. I challenge those on city council who are not enamored with the current economic talks with the township to begin their own talks with the township on other cooperative opportunities. How about for one putting the residents ahead of your own egos and political ambitions?


By Maverick

Let the city do it.

That is an interesting article. I was wondering what was meant by Weltlich and Yaple about the ''problems'' with other government agencies? What was promised and what did they get? Is that the problem?

I have been reading number of articles and I doubt we are going to see funds available either from the City or from ODOT in future do to a number of reasons.

I understand that ODOT is experiencing a huge jump in the inflation of construction projects. I understand the costs are up 30%. That will affect the City of Pickerington as well.

I agree that the Pickerington Streetscape a few years ago was a total waste of City taxpayer dollars. Did it really cost the City taxpayers $5 million to narrow the width of the main downtown streets?

The good thing is that if they never put an over pass or interchange in at Pickerington Road that will not bring any more traffic into downtown Pickerington.

I believe the Township does have a road and bridge levy and it is inside millage. It looks like they need to pass an outside millage levy soon.