The spine of Delaware County is a clustertruck. Every day, huge pickups, sedans, SUVs and semis cruise and coagulate up and down U.S. 23 between Worthington and Waldo.
The Ohio Department of Transportation is looking at investing more than $1 billion in various traffic-decluttering measures over the next decade after Gov. Mike DeWine swooped in to address what should be a local issue.
But the constant, crawling, caravan of cars and trucks on Rt. 23 is not so much a transportation problem as it is a planning and zoning mess. Delaware County (unofficial motto: “Come sprawl with us”) has long treated the “stroad” as an economic-development engine rather than as a state/federal highway. It is flanked by an agglomeration of shopping centers, big-box stores, groceries, fast food joints, medical centers, schools and car lots that sprouted up to serve a vast nebula of curvilinear subdivisions.
It’s almost impossible to get to or from those homes without driving on Rt. 23. You can live in a house 200 feet behind the Home Depot but still have to drive 1.3 miles around and through other subdivisions to the stroad in order to get to the store’s entrance.
That’s right: Stroad.
It’s a term coined by Charles Marohn, a “recovering engineer” who founded a website-turned-movement called Strong Towns. A stroad tries to be a combination of a street and a road but fails at both. It has the higher speeds and wider lanes of a road connecting two cities. But it also has the homes, businesses, curb cuts and multi-million-dollar traffic signaling of a city street.
Rt. 23 has been a four-lane highway between Columbus and the City of Delaware for 50 years or more, but for much of that time it cut a swath through farmland. It largely served pass-through traffic and was not dominated by local traffic – though there were scattered local businesses, a drive-in theater, and some institutional uses such as the Nationwide conference center, the Methodist Theological School and the Boy Scouts’ Camp Lazarus.
Over the past 25 years, development exploded as county officials’ visions were realized. Delaware is Ohio’s fastest-growing county, adding population at almost twice the rate of its nearest follower. In the past 25 years, its population has more than doubled to almost 230,000 people. And a lot of them have moved into subdivisions and apartment blocks on either side of the Rt. 23 commercial boxes and parking lots.
In some subdivisions, there are walls between homes and stores that eliminate foot traffic. The entire area was designed to accommodate automobile travel and is, by design, hostile to pedestrians and bicyclists.
ODOT Director Marchbanks told The Columbus Dispatch last fall that the Rt. 23 corridor “is not conducive to bike lanes, sidewalks or recreational paths. It instead has been, and will continue to be, designed for cars and trucks. … It would be foolhardy to put a bike anywhere along Route 23, north of Lazelle [Road],” which is the dividing line between Franklin and Delaware counties.
Marohn, of Strong Towns, said Rt. 23 is not unusual across the country. Engineers use the “regional traveler” as the basis for highway design, but “it’s really the local traffic (that dominates) because of the way we develop the land” – and eventually the stroad must be redesigned.
Marohn sees some merit in ODOT’s approach, noting that “the most prudent thing right now – the investment that will have the lowest loss – is access control: consolidate accesses and lessen the impact of development there. … Those investments are being done because of inertia – we’ve already invested there, and the state can justify (improvements) to offset the negatives of that development pattern. We’re spending money to make up for our bad planning to begin with,” he said.
But he sees things differently than DeWine.
The governor, as noted in a Dispatch article, said: “I think we have an obligation to come forward to the people of Ohio and say, ‘If we are going to deal with this problem of Route 23, this is what we think is the best solution.’ It’s going to be incumbent upon future legislators to figure out how to pay for it.”
But looking at long-term spending, Marohn said the state could shift costs to the county. While the state has responsibility for federal highways, this is a case in which the road was primarily for local economic development, with the costs paid by the state.
“What we really need from future legislators,” he said, “is to decide what not to fund: You want an interchange? You pay for it.”
Such challenges are not unique to Delaware. Others include Rt. 23 south into Pickaway County and Rt. 33 in Fairfield County. And, of course, U.S. 62 north of New Albany and into the Intel development frenzy. Are there meaningful state efforts to avoid the disconnect between land-use planning and transportation spending? Don’t hold your breath.
Brian Williams is a consultant and freelance writer. A former Columbus Dispatch reporter, he is retired from the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission.
