Mill Creek Expressway

The Mill Creek Expressway or Millcreek Expressway is a freeway in Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio, United States. It carries Interstate 75 through the Mill Creek valley, from the Brent Spence Bridge north to the Butler County line just north of Interstate 275.

Description

The Mill Creek Expressway in general starts from the Interstate 71/75 Interchange near the Brent Spence Bridge and ends at the Interstate 275 Interchange, it currently carries 3 lanes of traffic in each direction with 1 additional auxiliary lane at each exit. The section of freeway often experiences many traffic problems and crashes during the weekdays from 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM when people from downtown use the northbound side to usually get to the Northern Suburbs (Westchester, Mason, Liberty Township) from Downtown. The southbound side is usually used by truck drivers heading south or people just getting out of school (i.e. St Xavier High School, Elder High School, Ursula Academy, etc.) . Plans have been made to widen this section of interstate to 4 lanes on each side and 6 lanes on each side in some major exits such as the Norwood Lateral Expressway and Paddock Road. Information on this project can be found on the Ohio Department of Transportation's main webpage. This project is expected to start in 2010 and end in 2020, and has already been started with the replacement of the Moumonth Street Overpass to accommodate widening, and a new at grade intersection with Central Parkway is in development and is expected to be complete by August 2011. This is Phase II of the project.

History

The Mill Creek Expressway generally follows the old Miami and Erie Canal, which extended from Cincinnati to Toledo via Dayton, itself built in the Mill Creek valley near Cincinnati. The canal extended from the Ohio River along the present locations of Eggleston Avenue and Central Parkway to Mt. Storm Park, and continued north, remaining close to the Mill Creek Expressway to Butler County. The never-opened Cincinnati Subway was built in the 1920s, mostly using the abandoned canal right-of-way from downtown to the State Route 562 interchange at St. Bernard.

The first portion of the expressway was built in 1941 - during World War II - to serve the Wright Aeronautical plant in Lockland. It was initially planned to run from Paddock Road (State Route 4) in Carthage north to Cincinnati-Dayton Road (then U.S. Route 25) near Maud,^[2] but was only built — almost completely along the old canal — between Galbraith Road and Glendale-Milford Road (then State Route 126. A short extension was built south to Towne Street in Elmwood Place in the late 1940s.

On January 19, 2015, an overpass north of Hopple Street collapsed onto the highway below at approximately 10:30pm.^[3] The span that failed was the segment of the former northbound ramp to Hopple Street that passed over the southbound lanes of I-75.^[4] The overpass had been closed and was in the process of being removed after a replacement ramp was opened on 26 December 2014. The interstate underneath was open at the time of the failure. One construction worker on the overpass was killed during the collapse by a falling steel beam.^[5] A truck driver was injured when his semi hit the fallen overpass immediately after the collapse. One other worker was in a backhoe on the bridge but was uninjured.^[6]

Exit list

See Interstate 75 in Ohio.

References