“If the weather holds out and everything goes right, this is it for the year,” Wilkens told the Journal-News.
The contractor was scheduled to switch traffic into the project’s final configuration and permanently close the eastbound Ohio 129 to Liberty Way exit ramp overnight, after a host brief intermittent lane and ramp closures over the past several months.
Originally the project was supposed to be finished in November, but construction projects all over have been crippled by pandemic-induced labor shortages and supply chain issues. Liberty Way was no different. The updated prediction was construction would stretch into next year.
Liberty Twp. Trustee Tom Farrell said “awesome” when he learned the final leg is finishing.
“We’re excited, we weren’t expecting it until the first of the year and getting it done a little earlier is exciting for the residents that have to drive through the Christmas traffic in that area,” Farrell said. “It’s already proven to be an asset getting on and off, it’s decreased the traffic. Traffic pattern change is something people have to get used to unfortunately, but they will very quickly.”
It rankles officials here that a change is even necessary, since the interchange is only a dozen years old — the $40 million interchange which was paid 100% with local funds — opened in October 2009. When the interchange was first imagined, the design being built now was preferred by locals, but rejected by the state because it terminates into a local road.
Wilkens said it became evident shortly after the mega $350 million multi-use Liberty Center development opened and traffic picked up in 2016 that the design was flawed.
The interchange modification price tag was $24.5 million but that was not the only piece of this project, there are other improvements around the hospital. The new interchange design takes Ohio 129 over to the new roundabout at Cox Road; Veterans Boulevard was extended and improved with two new roundabouts at a cost of $4.9 million. Next spring Liberty Way will be widened for an estimated $3 million. The total cost of all the work was estimated at $32.5 million.
Wilkens obtained $11.6 million in federal money for the interchange — the state paid $1 million for their paving project within the project — and tax increment financing dollars covered the rest. He also has $2 million in federal dollars for Liberty Way widening.
He said the project appears to be on budget even in these costly construction times. The project was bid and construction started in 2021 before rampant inflation took hold.
“I think it’s going to be close on budget,” Wilkens said. “I’m sure they’re going to ask for more money because probably the contractor got pinched in this somewhere along the line, they bid and then prices go up but our bid prices are pretty well contained inside that contract.”
Retired Liberty Twp. Trustee Christine Matacic was around when the interchange was first constructed and she said they wanted the roundabout set up back then, before they were popular, “we were ahead of the game.”
“It was the key proposal that we were going for because we felt that would be the best possible solution, preserve plenty of space to develop ... but at the same time getting people off of 129 much easier than doing the crisscross thing they ended up with, which was very dangerous from the get-go,” Matacic said.
“I’m glad to see we’re finally getting what we asked for all those years ago; it’s unfortunate we’ve had to spend all this extra money to get there.”
Trustee Steve Schramm said it is too soon to tell if the new traffic operation will be better than the old.
“We haven’t been able to see it flow yet, I would say let’s talk in about two weeks as people start figuring it out, creating new traffic patterns...,” Schramm said. “Everything is a move in the right direction to me, the first few weeks and few months we’ll have complainers because things change, but then people also start changing their movements, adjusting their patterns if it bothers them too much.”
Wilkens said the only project still unfinished this year is traffic signal installation at the tricky intersection of Hamilton Mason and Mauds Hughes roads that straddle the Liberty and West Chester boarder. It should be fully operational in a couple weeks.
The $2 million project began in July and the road opened last month with stop signs instead of lights. Wilkens said there was a delay in getting the poles. It entailed putting a new traffic light at the narrow railroad underpass just east of the project, another at the intersection itself, adding left-turn lanes and realigning the intersection.
Wilkens said traffic signals will be two-phased, traffic going north and south can run at the same time but east and west will run one at a time “people get jammed up because of the mousehole, so it’s not going to be the most efficient intersection.”
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