CINCINNATI — City council members are feeling the heat from constituents to help alleviate downtown Cincinnati congestion for drivers. A new motion is pushing the administration to do more.
It’s been more than six weeks since a fire shut down the southbound lanes of I-471, sending a large portion of the 50,000 daily vehicles to the city’s street grid below.
Council member Seth Walsh and Evan Nolan’s motion on addressing the issue passed the Climate, Environmental and Infrastructure Committee on Tuesday.
"Someone just needs to take the lead on pushing forward on this," Walsh said. He emphasized that the motion “is to direct the administration to step up as leaders in the cause to try to fix and solve as much of the congestion as we possibly can.”
It’s aimed to challenge perceived inertia from the city administration on addressing the traffic. Walsh said he is “disappointed with the city’s reaction so far.”
At a news conference last week, City Manager Sheryl Long said the city’s efforts are already at their “maximum.”
Long said there are no plans to put officers on the street to direct traffic, citing public safety resources and that traffic signal timings are at their max.
When asked by WCPO about what options remain, she said the Department of Transportation and Engineering will give recommendations and that the city “will continue to have conversations with them to see what other things that they think they do.”
DOWNTOWN TRAFFIC: No plans to put officers at intersections & signal timing limit has been reached. @WCPO
— Andrew Rowan (@andrewrowan128) December 12, 2024
"We are kind of at our maximum at the moment of what the City of Cincinnati can do," city manager said.@Bret_Buganski on council's push for more: https://t.co/78Wk2AwAJU pic.twitter.com/AhS73u1D4K
Given that position from the city administration, WCPO asked Walsh what his motion aims to accomplish.
“My motion challenges that there’s more we can do than just that,” he said. “I think that getting to yes and getting to solutions is the next step we have to go down.”
He said improvements may actualize after normal traffic volume returns in early January. At that point, he’d like to see an assessment of what’s working and what’s not.
When asked for a metric for success, Walsh said he'll “start noticing the trend is either people are getting happier or we’re going to start hearing fewer comments.”
Since speaking out on bridge traffic one month ago, Walsh said he’s been bombarded daily with upset constituents.
One proposed solution from council member Mark Jeffreys is to request that the Ohio Department of Transportation and the OKI Regional Council of Governments explore the possibility of diverting traffic from I-71, I-75 and I-74 to the I-275 loop.
"Even if you could divert a quarter or half of it, that would be a huge help to freeing up the bottleneck in the bridges by the river," he said. "It’s not easy, but, you know, neither are some of these other solutions."
During today's committee meeting, I proposed an amendment to the motion put forward by Councilmembers Nolan and Walsh. It aims to explore diverting through-traffic to I-275 in order to reduce traffic delays caused by the bridge closure. pic.twitter.com/PG1jNNNhyG
— Councilman Mark Jeffreys (@ccc_jeffreys) December 17, 2024
Meanwhile, construction on the damaged I-471 lanes continues to progress.
I-471 UPDATE: Steel for girders arriving at fabricator. Details at https://t.co/Q9MUihidBQ pic.twitter.com/l681tzzlyd
— ODOT Cincinnati (@ODOT_Cincinnati) December 17, 2024
ODOT spokesperson Kathleen Fuller said demolition is nearly completed. This week, crews are repairing the concrete support pillars.
Steel has arrived from Illinois to a fabrication plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky. In the coming weeks, it will be fabricated into custom-made girders and then shipped to the bridge site for crews to install.
“All of this is on schedule right now,” she said.
ODOT had previously stated the targeted completion date for the I-471 southbound repairs is in March.
