OTTAWA COUNTY, Ohio — A major state route in Ottawa County has finally received some major infrastructure updates more than 30 years after officials first saw a need.
The interchange of state Routes 2 and 53 in Port Clinton is a complex case for the Ohio Department of Transportation, being the primary route for most visitors to the Lake Erie islands during the busy period between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
ODOT District 2 Deputy Director Patrick McColley said the corridor once saw the second-highest injury accident rate in the district in the early 1990s. A solution was never figured out until recently when the state included funding to install two new roundabouts to keep traffic moving.
"We'd also have backups occasionally on very high demand times, even going onto state Route 2, those should help flow traffic better," McColley said.
Now any traffic coming off of the route won't need to stop anywhere near the on-ramps and departing traffic should be able to hit the highway much faster as well.
Larry Fletcher, president of Shores & Islands Ohio, said the roundabouts will create "a much smoother and safer route for thousands of people that go by here every day, especially in the busy summer tourism season."
Along with the roundabouts, ODOT is widening state Route 53 through the corridor stretch to finally include a turn lane.
"Before, they could make a left turn but they were holding up traffic," McColley said. "Now there's a middle turn lane they can get off safely and don't hold traffic back up."
Work began on the project last fall to ensure construction did not impact tourism season, which begins on Memorial Day.
"When we come up into this area, including this project, those projects we try to get done between Labor Day and Memorial Day," McColley said. "It requires a lot more coordination with the asphalt plants and the contractors, but it is that vitally important to stay out of that heavy tourism season."
Steven Arndt, a former Ottawa County commissioner and state representative, was integral in the project's completion, not only as a former county official who got this project going in the 1990s.
He also submitted the amendment that allowed for tourism-related projects to receive state funding as a state industry, allowing for a much higher total project budget.
"It's kind of indicative of how slow projects move," Arndt said. "I retired five years ago and that amendment was introduced five years ago, and here we are today finally able to cut the ribbon and seeing traffic utilize that asset."
The lane widening on state Route 53 should wrap up soon, according to ODOT, and more projects will continue later this year on state Route 2 near the Edison Bridge.