- Elk Creek Road in Madison Twp. — $4 million bridge replacement scheduled for 2025. Federal grant covers 95% of the cost.
- Hamilton Mason Road at Mauds Hughes Road in Liberty and West Chester townships —$2 million intersection improvement scheduled for 2022. Federal funds covering 90% of the cost.
- Princeton Road at Mauds Hughes Road in Liberty Twp. — $1.6 million roundabout scheduled for 2023. Federal funds covering 100% of the cost.
- Millikin Road at Morris Road in Fairfield Twp. — $1 million roundabout scheduled in 2024. Federal grant covers 80% of the cost.
Butler County Engineer Greg Wilkens said they have been extremely successful in securing outside funding.
“We’ve been pretty fortunate which we usually are, but it doesn’t happen by accident,” Wilkens told the Journal-News. “We make the submittals and we probably have a better than 90% success rate because we pick and choose the ones we think we’ll be successful at getting and match the projects to the grants.”
The commissioners voiced some concerns about the Fairfield Twp. roundabout at Millikin and Morris roads because it is close to both Fairfield North Elementary School and the township fire headquarters.
“I don’t see how this is going to fix the problem,” Commissioner Don Dixon said. “Part of the problem is parents drop off their kids at school, they line up on Morris Road, you can’t get in to drop the kids off so is the roundabout going to make the line longer.”
Wilkens said accident rates have been increasing in that area that’s why they want to install a roundabout —traffic circles have been proven to be the safest traffic control devises. He said as far as back-ups, “roundabouts carry about 30% more capacity than conventional signalized intersections, let alone a stopping condition like that, from a capacity standpoint that intersection would improve.”
Wilkens said there is a downside with the federal funding, as evidenced by the Elk Creek Bridge replacement project that is three years away, despite the fact it is down to only one lane.
“We tried to expedite it, we tried to move this funding up to try to replace it earlier, but we can’t move it because it’s federal money,” Wilkens said.
There are more federal funds heading this way with the proposed $1 trillion federal infrastructure bill that passed the Senate in bipartisan fashion last week.
Estimates from the White House and Ohio’s senators show the state is in line to receive at least $9.2 billion for highways, $1.2 billion for public transportation, $483 million for bridge replacement, $140 million for an electric vehicle charging network and at least $100 million to expand internet coverage.
Wilkens said it is premature to “guesstimate” how much the county could receive.
“You spend a lot of time following those bills early on and then you’re time’s wasted because it changes,” Wilkens said. “We usually wait until they’re already passed and then we figure it out.”
The county has a major project looming the commissioners have vowed to try to solve, a fix that has a price tag between $2 to $10 million — one solution involves a bridge over railroad tracks — and will most likely require federal funding. Cedar Grove subdivision residents in St. Clair Twp. who have been “held hostage” by stalled or stopped trains petitioned the commissioners for help in June.
They along with Wilkens took a field trip to the location to assess the situation and met with neighbors a couple weeks ago. Commissioner Cindy Carpenter asked how long it might take to solve the problem. Wilkens said aside from all the requirements in a federal grant application — and he has never gone for federal money to solve an access problem like this — there are a host of other issues.
“If I could secure federal funding today that bridge option is five years out, minimum,” Wilkens said.
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