Beneath the Flyover
Mike takes a moment to marvel at the massive new 70/71 interchange in downtown Columbus, notably a towering flyover ramp that spans multiple major corridors, and over the Olentangy River.
Good morning! It is a fine, early Saturday morning on 9 August 2025, and I’m coming to you live at about 4:05 AM from a little nook in Downtown Columbus that most people probably don’t notice. I am currently sitting right beneath the massive construction site for the new 70/71 interchange, a critical node in our regional infrastructure that crosses right over the Olentangy River.
For those of you familiar with our highway system, we have an outer belt and an inner belt. I’m at the southwest corner of that inner loop, right where SR-315, I-71, and I-70 all cross. They are building this absolutely massive flyover ramp. It’s a giant, sweeping arc that takes off from I-70 eastbound and swings about 270 degrees to the left to continue onto I-71 southbound.
Looking up at these viaducts, the scale is just hard to grasp. This ramp is at least 2-3 lanes wide, and I’d estimate it’s sitting about 80-100 feet in the air — nearly the height of a 10-story building. Now, as a work of structural engineering, it’s impressive, but I have to get my opinions out of the way: **it is hideous**. It obstructs one of the most beautiful views of the Columbus skyline, especially for anyone driving in from Cincinnati. It’s an appalling obstruction, and I honestly don't know how it got approved.
If you look at the design, it’s a **stack interchange** rather than a traditional cloverleaf. Because of that, this single ramp has to clear multiple levels of infrastructure. It has to fly over the existing I-70 westbound lanes, a railroad crossing, and the river itself. This spot is essentially the **nexus of six different corridors** all converging in one place.
I sometimes have to check my own biases because, while I love driving, I hate the assumption that the government supporting transit is somehow taking something away from drivers. We have to stop looking at these things as a **"fixed pie"** where if one person gets something nice, someone else has to lose out. The world works on innovation and efficiency; there is enough pie to go around if we are clever about how we make it.
Anyway, I’ve rambled on enough for this hour of the morning. It’s now about 4:20 AM, and I’m going to sign off from this beautiful summer weekend. This has been Mike George, live from Columbus. **Take care of yourselves, take care of somebody else, and stay hydrated.** Toodles!
