Interstate 70 Traffic Pattern Rearrangement

ZANESVILLE, Ohio – Phase Three of the Interstate 70 reconstruction project to modernize the roadway through downtown Zanesville is making changes to better accommodate winter conditions. 

Ohio Department of Transportation District 5 Public Information Officer Chas Cosgrave explained some of the changes the public can expect to experience.

“So, Sunday night the Westbound Underwood off-ramp will be re-opening. And that’s going to be taking place Sunday evening into Monday morning. Monday morning motorists can expect to see the Maple Avenue off-ramp closing. So we want to make sure that those… that kind of work is taking place together, right. We don’t want to cut off access to downtown. So Underwood will re-open and Maple Avenue will close. And then towards the end of November, the 7th Street off-ramp will re-open as well,” Cosgrave said.

He also mentioned that the right lane on the Westbound side will be closed Sunday night into Monday morning to accommodate the Underwood reopening and that motorists should plan ahead for unanticipated delays in their travels. 

“It has certainly been challenging,” Cosgrave said. “You know there’s been 16 bridges on the project and we’re actually rebuilding and reconstructing those while live traffic is actually driving over them. And we have very limited space to do that in as well. So there’s been a lot of really unique engineering challenges that have gone into this project and it’s really interesting to see the ways that we’ve come up with to respond to those, both maintaining traffic the entire time and keeping pedestrians safe.”

Cosgrave advised motorists to slow down and move over to avoid hitting construction crewmembers and their equipment because ODOT crews have been struck 92 times this year, which is up from 84 last year.