Residents of Newport's East Row Historic District would prefer to keep Ohio commuters in Ohio.
They plan to make their concerns known at a public open house of the I-471 Corridor Study next Tuesday from 4 PM-7 PM at the Disabled American Veterans National Headquarters, 3725 Alexandria Pike in Cold Spring.
Since 2006, the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments (OKI) has been studying the land uses and transportation networks within the nine-mile corridor to determine ways to enhance the quality of life and economic potential, and proposed solutions include the addition of a fourth lane to I-471.
A draft letter posted to an East Row message board by resident Ian Budd cites OKI's Eastern Corridor Study, which recommended routing traffic from the east side of Cincinnati to Downtown through Ohio, rather than up through Kentucky.
"It is now our understanding that recommendations are being made that are in direct contradiction with the outcome of the previous study, now placing all of the burden for Ohio's commuters on Newport, Kentucky," the letter says. "Adding a fourth lane will increase the already unacceptable level of noise, vibration and pollution to which our historic homes are subject."
Implementation of recommendations from the Eastern Corridor Study have been held up in litigation over a proposed Little Miami River bridge crossing.
The I-471 Corridor Study is being done in conjunction with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet's I-471/KY 8 Interchange Modification Project, which makes the threat of a fourth lane all the more problematic.
"It will also endanger our plans for a solution to the ramps issue that would route traffic out of our neighborhood and on to route 8 through an existing ramp corridor," the letter says. "By adding a fourth lane, we risk either losing the solution we have been working towards for 20 years, or losing our homes."
The City of Newport is also on record as being against the plan.
Preliminary studies have shown that adding a fourth lane would only improve predicted future service levels from an "F" grade to "D", and the resulting increase in traffic could make the "Big Mac" Bridge obsolete, causing far more disruption to the neighborhood.
"It is grossly unfair to propose to make traffic smoother for Ohio motorists for a mere two hours a day at the permanent expense of Newport residents", the letter says.
Friday, March 21, 2008
East Row: Keep Ohio commuters in Ohio
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4 comments:
I'd have to agree with the residents of Newport 100%.
I wonder if it would be legal for them to charge a toll to cars with out of state plates on that stretch of 471?
As an East Row resident myself, my major concern is that this will prevent us from taking the KY-8 471 ramp out of our neighborhood. I can live with a little extra traffic noise, but a lot of people don't realize that the current ramp is actually a residential street itself, and that it completely encircles another street. Residential traffic merges with "ramp traffic" from 3 different directions inside of about half a block.
They modified the ramp recently, making it three lanes wide after the bend, which has actually helped reduce the frequent backups onto the Big Mac Bridge. The problem is that now the traffic just comes through faster because it doesn't back up when the light goes red. So they've lessened the frequency of an obvious hazard, but in the process made a less obvious problem even more dangerous.
Here's a view from above for anyone who's never seen it, or never noticed that the ramp is actually the 100 and 200 blocks of Park Avenue! Thanks for covering this story:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=ahlering+alley+and+park+avenue+newport+ky&sll=39.097233,-84.49144&sspn=0.002015,0.003873&ie=UTF8&t=h&om=1&ll=39.097711,-84.491649&spn=0.001749,0.003616&z=18
^ Okay. Pasting in the google maps URL didn't work. Here's the same thing in at Tiny URL:
http://tinyurl.com/2mofqm
The better solution is to improve US-50 and OH-32 on the east side of town so that Clermont County residents don't have to travel through Kentucky to get to Downtown Cincinnati. Once that is fixed and the Brent Spence Bridge is replaced, I don't think traffic on I-471 will be as much of an issue.
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