Ohio State Route 16

According to 800zipcodes, State Route 16 or OH-16 is a state route and partial freeway in the U.S. state of Ohio. The road forms an east-west route from the capital Columbus via Newark to Coshocton. Around Newark, OH-16 is a freeway / 2×2 divided highway over a length of 47 kilometers. The total route is 113 kilometers long.

Travel directions

OH-16 begins in downtown Columbus as Broad Street, historically one of the city’s major arterial roads. The road has 4 lanes and leads through the eastern suburbs and suburbs. The road is mostly straight and passes south of the Columbus airport. There is also a connection to the Interstate 270 ring road. After more than 20 kilometers you leave the urban area and the road leads through an area with many scattered buildings up to Granville.

From Granville, OH-16 is a freeway, and is an extension of OH-37. The freeway opens up the city of Newark. It is east of Newark not a full freeway with some at-grade intersections. Further outside Newark it is again a freeway to Dresden. Further east, the road curves north and ends at Coshocton on US 36.

History

OH-16 is the historic connection between Columbus and Newark and so was an important road early on.

The freeway through the Newark area is quite old, with the first section opening between Granville and Newark around 1963. Circa 1966, the section east of Newark opened beyond Marne. Around 1970 this was extended to Nashport. The extension of 19 kilometers to the height of Dresden opened to traffic around 2002-2003. In 2017, a grade-level intersection between Granville and Newark was replaced by a grade-separated junction called Thornwood Crossing.

Ohio State Route 32

State Route 32 or OH-32 is a state route in the U.S. state of Ohio. The road forms a major east-west route through the south of the state, from Cincinnati to the West Virginia border at Belpre, opposite the city of Parkersburg. The road is almost entirely a 2×2 divided highway and is also known as the James A. Rhodes Appalachian Highway. OH-32 is 294 kilometers long.

Travel directions

OH-32 begins east of the city of Cincinnati on US 50. The road leads east and is initially a secondary city road through the eastern suburbs of the city. From its junction to Interstate 275, OH-32 is a 2×2 divided highway. The road heads east through hilly southern Ohio. The first half has quite a lot of meadows, but to the east the area becomes densely wooded. The road alternates between grade-separated connections and at-grade intersections. Many major intersections are grade separated, but OH-32 is not a freeway. The road mainly leads through small towns and the necessary US Highways are crossedthat run north-south in this part of Ohio. From Albany to Belpre, OH-32 is a long stretch double-numbered with US 50, with the Athens bypass being a freeway. West of Belpre, US 50 branches off over the Ohio River to bypass Parkersburg, West Virginia. OH-32 then continues a little further to Belpre, partly double-numbered with OH-7. The Parkersburg-Belpre Bridge then crosses the Ohio River to Parkersburg.

History

OH-32 was created in 1962 by renumbering OH-74, which was necessary due to the construction of Interstate 74 west of Cincinnati, conflicting road numbers are not allowed in Ohio. OH-32 at that time ran from Cincinnati to just past Peebles.

However, the current highway is an entirely new highway, part of Corridor D of the Appalachian Development Highway System, which also included US 50 in West Virginia. The western portion of the Ohio River, however, was constructed mostly south of US 50 in Ohio. This section was numbered as OH-124 and OH-346 between Piketon and Albany for some time.

The first new sections to be constructed as a 2×2 divided highway were between Cincinnati and Batavia in the west and between Coolville and Belpre in the east, in the early 1960s. The construction of the new road between Batavia and Athens started in the late 1960s. The section between Peebles and Albany is an entirely new route, with no clear previous connection for through traffic. Around 1970/1971 a long section between Piketon and Albany opened to traffic. This included almost 80 kilometers of new 2×2 divided highway through an area where there were previously no fast east-west connections.

Around 1972 the section between Batavia and Williamsburg opened over 10 kilometers, around 1973 a longer section opened from Peebles to Piketon of approximately 40 kilometers. Around 1980, an extension of about 23 kilometers opened between Williamsburg and Sardinia, and the missing section between Sardinia and Peebles opened about 40 kilometers around 1982.

In the early 1970s, short pieces of 2×2 opened at Albany and Athens. The Athens freeway bypass opened to traffic circa 1979, followed by a few miles east of Athens around 1980. In the late 1980s, the section between Albany and Athens was widened to 2×2 lanes. Around 1998-1999, the last section between Athens and Coolville was widened to 2×2 lanes.

Since 1980, OH-32 has been a much more developed route for east-west traffic from Cincinnati to Parkersburg than US 50 further north. This is one of the few cases where a state route is better developed than a US Highway in the same corridor.

The interchange with I-275 on the east side of Cincinnati was originally a cloverleaf cloverleaf. Between 2013 and 2016 this was converted into a clover turbine, however, one exit from I-275 to OH-32 was made at ground level.