Fairfield Church of Christ renovations
TV judge holds workshop at East
2008 homecomings
Home > Blogs > Butler County News and Issues > Archives > 2008 > July > 02 > Entry
The Oxford connector roil
Like all things circulating around a proposed road connecting U.S. 27 and Ohio 73, the project’s history is relative, depending on whom you ask.
Officials with the Butler County Engineer’s Office say the proposal stemmed from a two-year study concluded in 2004 of future traffic needs in northwest Butler County. The study found that numerous trucks drive U.S. 27 through the heart of Miami University to get to Ohio 73 en route to Richmond, Indiana.
Critics say its real birth was a university-funded junket that sent Oxford city leaders to Washington D.C. to lobby then-U.S. Sen. DeWine.
DeWine secured three earmarks in 2004 and 2005, totaling $22 million — his largest earmark in his political career, he said — for four projects listed in the 2004 study.
In addition to the connector, the earmarks are to fund intersection improvement at U.S. 127 and Ohio 73, and Ohio 177 at Ohio 73, and the widening of U.S. 27 from Chestnut Street south to Stillwell Beckett Road.
DeWine, now a part-time professor at Miami University, said four of his children attended the school and felt that truck traffic on U.S. 27 was “a safety issue.”
“I think it’s a very good project,” he said.
Since the federal earmark, local leaders have flouted public debate and considered the project a foregone conclusion, according to Dana Saulnier, a Milford Twp. resident who has worked with Oxford and Milford Twp. residents to collect hundreds of signatures to shut down the project.
“Once the federal funding was in place, then local voices were disenfranchised,” Saulnier said.
Stephen Snyder, executive assistant to the university president, countered that the public was involved throughout the 2004 study, which was headed by the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments.
While this project is mired in the planning process and not scheduled to break ground until 2013, many protesting residents are worried about what comes next. Rumors abound about another connector taking traffic to Yager stadium from Ohio 73 to Ohio 732. Some worry that this is the beginning of a long-discussed bypass around Oxford to the west.
“That’s public speculation,” said Keith Smith, Ohio Department of Transportation planning and environmental engineer.
While local roads are planned to connect U.S. 27 and Ohio 732 south of Oxford and U.S. 27 and Contreras Road west of the city, there’s no bypass or road up to Yager stadium on the long-range plan, Smith said.
Critics of the connector say the $19 million federal earmark would be better spent building roads people will actually use.
Rick Bailey, a consultant for the project for Oxford, said truckers will use it because they’ll be given a route around Oxford to Richmond, Indiana that’s one mile longer, but six minutes shorter.
We’re planning an expanded series of articles with voices from all sides of this issue Friday in the Oxford Press and in the Hamilton Journal-News and other papers Sunday.
Do you have anything to add to this debate?
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Transportation
Comments
By JJ
July 3, 2008 2:00 PM | Link to this
What was striking to me was the response of Mr. Leland Gordon. You could almost hear him laughing when making light of the dog biting two people. If on the other hand the report had been two inmates kick a dog in the rear, Mr. Gordon would have insisted the men be given 20 years to live in prison for mistreating the dog.