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Home » Diets that Work » Work Finally Begins on Liberty Street Narrowing Project in Over-the-Rhine – Cincinnati CityBeat

A map of planned changes to Liberty StreetCity of CincinnatiIt took roughly seven years to go from suggestions by neighborhood groups to fleshed out plans to wrangling at City Hall to reality, but it's finally here: work began this week on an effort to make Liberty Street safer for pedestrians and once again tie together the northern and southern halves of Over-the-Rhine.

The $7.4 million worth of alterations now underway along Liberty Street touch three neighborhoods and mark the first significant changes to the major OTR thoroughfare since the 1950s, when it was dramatically widened, proponents say.

"We have two different sides of the community," Over-the-Rhine Community Council President Maurice Wagoner said today. "It's difficult to cross Liberty Street and be safe going back to both sides of the neighborhood... It's been very gratifying to bring this neighborhood and make it one, instead of 'north of Liberty and south of Liberty,' again after 60 years."

The changes will include one less lane of traffic; medians; bump-outs at Sycamore, Main, Walnut, Vine, Race and Elm streets and Central Parkway; pedestrian islands; trees; and other features stretching from Sycamore Street to Central Parkway.

That's a busy seam between the two parts of OTR where pedestrians experience significant danger. Other improvements including repaving will stretch from Reading Road in Pendleton to Dalton Avenue in Queensgate. The intersection of Liberty Hill and Liberty Street will also receive a traffic light.

Council member Jeff Pastor lived on Sycamore Street when he was a child, he says.

"I've taken my own life in my hands many times as a kid just trying to cross Liberty," he said. "I watched my grandmother do the same thing. I think much of the job on city council is to fix the scars in our city. Liberty Street is one of those scars and this project will see one of our 52 neighborhoods attached back together."

The road narrowing was among the proposals brought to council in 2013 by representatives of the Over-the-Rhine Brewery District in northern OTR. But it encountered years of political turbulence.

Cincinnati City Council May 1 last year voted 8-1 to approve a road diet for Liberty Street though that plan was a little different from original proposals.

Concerns about on-street parking, access to FC Cincinnati's coming stadium and the cost of moving a major water main that runs underneath Liberty Street all played into a protracted fight around the proposed alterations.

Supporters of narrowing the street say the artery, widened in the late 1950s at the expense of a number of buildings, is a barrier for pedestrian flow between the two sides of OTR.

"There are two schools that sit directly on Liberty Street," Cincinnati City Council member Chris Seelbach said today. "Young kids cross this seven-lane highway every day. We wanted to make it safer. Second, we wanted to try and bridge Over-the-Rhine back together."

But those opposed to narrowing the street pointed out that it connects the neighborhood and the West End to both I-71 and I-75, and that the coming FC Cincinnati soccer stadium is likely to bring more congestion and traffic to the area.

The new compromise plan will reduce Liberty Street to six lanes. That's one more lane than the original five-lane plan drawn up after several years of community input and study, but one less lane than an alternate plan supported by Mayor John Cranley that would have added bump-outs to some sections of the road while keeping it at seven lanes. The seven-lane plan would have preserved parking on both sides of Liberty Street. The so-called five-lane plan would have potentially restricted parking on both sides during peak hours.

The compromise plan will end up reclaiming less right-of-way for future development than the five-lane plan would have 10 feet but also preserves most of the parking on the street, the city says, and won't cause the relocation of a water main that would have cost roughly $800,000.

Council member Seelbach, who long championed the original five-lane plan, called the eventual project underway now an example of how differing sides can come together and get things done.

Work should be done by March 2021, Seelbach says.

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Work Finally Begins on Liberty Street Narrowing Project in Over-the-Rhine - Cincinnati CityBeat

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Home » Diets that Work » Work Finally Begins on Liberty Street Narrowing Project in Over-the-Rhine – Cincinnati CityBeat