Folks who regularly drive on I-70 west of Hilliard-Rome Road may feel like there have been an unusually high number of crashes in the construction zone there.
Matt McGuire, public information officer with the Ohio Department of Transportation District 6, said the stretch of road likely isn't seeing more crashes than other work zones in the state, but that crashes that happen there cause bigger traffic jams because of the narrow lanes.
"It can take longer to get emergency personnel to the scene, so it can take longer to clear those incidents out and they can have a larger impact on traffic," McGuire said.
McGuire gave the example of an August semi-truck fire that happened at the edge of the I-70 work area. While the semi didn't crash and the fire wasn't caused by construction, the location of the incident caused long delays.
"You had to shut down both directions of I-70 to get the fire under control and whatnot. And that was — I think it was a few hours," McGuire said.
The highway is being rebuilt and repaved from Hilliard-Rome Road to the Madison County border in a $54 million ODOT project.
Construction began in the spring, but traffic flow just changed in early July, McGuire said. Since then, ODOT recorded 11 crashes within the project boundaries and two just across the county line that are categorized as "construction-related."
That's about the same as the number of crashes on I-71 south of Columbus, where traffic is diverted in a similar way for a $126,590,000 road widening project. Ohio State Highway Patrol's OSTATS - Crash Board shows 12 construction-related crashes in or near that project area for the same time period.
McGuire said that last year, ODOT logged just over 4,000 crashes in work zones around the state. The majority of those crashes happened because drivers were following too closely, he said.
"And that speaks to that challenge of, again, when you're traveling through the work zone, you don't have as much room to recover and react to anything that's happening within that zone," McGuire said. "So, I just really want to encourage people, please make sure that you're following and respecting all of the signs, speed limits, traffic control devices. Make sure that you're giving yourself extra space when you are working through those work zones."
The construction on I-70 is expected to wrap up in 2027.
