Ohio set to spend $3.2 billion on road improvements
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — The Ohio Department of Transportation is launching a record $3.2 billion construction season including 955 projects — 38 of them considered 'major' with a cost above $10 million — across the state.
According to ODOT, this year's construction season will improve 5,538 miles of pavement, enough to pave a two-lane road from New York City to San Diego, and 844 bridges.
ODOT said safety continues to be the lead focus with 171 projects directly focused on improving safety. Ohio boasts one of the largest safety programs, per capita, of any state in the United States.
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In the central Ohio region, construction will begin on 94 new projects for an investment of $446 million. This year's construction program includes 15 safety projects directly aimed at reducing serious or deadly crashes in the area. It also includes 16 bridge projects, 12 pavement projects, and eight major projects each over $10 million.
According to ODOT District 6 Deputy Director Toni Turowski, the area's largest project — the I-70/71 split in downtown Columbus — is continuing from last year. He said Front Street will reopen by late summer and the large flyover bridge by the end of the year.
Other projects wrapping up this year include the I-270 and US-23 interchange on Columbus' south side.
'It's a good safety improvement, rebuilding a lot of bridges, feeding some of the growth in the Rickenbacker area,' Turowski said.
Turowski said these projects are necessary with the growth that central Ohio is seeing.
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'A lot of these projects are going to uncork bottlenecks in our roadway network,' he said. 'A lot of these projects we're working on improving interchanges as opposed to adding lanes, and they will reduce friction and improve safety for the public as more people live and work in central Ohio.'
According to Turowski, as we find ourselves in the midst of severe weather season, contractors and staff take advantage of milder weather when they can.
'We are very good to work around whether it's flooding or high water,' Turowski said. 'So, we just try to be opportunistic and make sure we don't let schedules slip even when we have a bad weather day like last night.'
ODOT District 5 Deputy Director Jason Surgeon said that in Fairfield County, crews will begin work in August on the US-33 and Pickerington Road interchange.
'We're going to be replacing the existing signalized intersection with a full interchange to make it more of an interstate-like corridor through the northwestern portion of Fairfield County,' he said.
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Sturgeon said they continue to focus a lot of time, effort, and money toward making improvements in congested areas that tend to see a lot of crashes.
'We have about $1.2 billion of open construction contracts right now in central Ohio, just on the ODOT system,' Turowski said. 'So that's really going to do a lot of good both for addressing congestion, improving safety and building for the future.'
Another notable project includes the I-70/I-270/Brice Road Westbound Interchange Improvements as part of the next phase of the Far East Freeway project.
'Every day, traffic goes down 270 southbound to go out to eastern Ohio and they kind of fight across slow traffic,' Turowski said. 'And we've been building, if you notice, the big bridge going up and over that interchange out towards Bryce Road, out towards Zanesville.'
Turowski said it's too early to tell how President Donald Trump's new tariffs on imports will impact construction.
'We are tracking that and we're considering it in our future budgets,' Turowski said. 'We're just going to have to see how it plays out in our supply chains and see if it eats into our available budget.'
According to the Ohio State Highway Patrol, there were 4,000 work zone crashes in Ohio last year. ODOT continues to stress the importance of work zone safety and leaving space for crews to work so they can return home safely to their families.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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