City to Washington: Help pay for bridge

The city of Cincinnati will ask the federal government to pay for most of a new bridge connecting to the region's largest community college.

City Council on Thursday unanimously approved asking Washington to chip in $33 million for the $42 million Interstate 75 overpass connecting Cincinnati State's Clifton campus to South Cumminsville.

The city is vying to get a chunk of the $500 million federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant. Applications for the highly competitive, nationwide program are due next week.

If Cincinnati is awarded the grant money, the state has agreed to equally split the remaining $9 million with the city. The state has not officially put that in writing, because the project has to first be approved by Ohio's Transportation Review Advisory Council, state and city officials said. Construction tentatively is scheduled to start in 2017.

If the money doesn't come through, there are no guarantees the bridge project will get done.

Direct highway access to Cincinnati State's campus will be eliminated in the $161 million overhaul of the I-74/I-75 interchange.

Also Thursday, the state sent a letter to the city saying it no longer plans to delay the I-75/Hopple Street interchange. The Ohio Department of Transportation was planning to delay the completion of the ramp to northbound I-75 from Hopple for several years in order to perform work nearby on the new Cincinnati State bridge.

But Uptown and Camp Washington business leaders asked the Hopple project not be delayed. Cincinnati State President O'dell Owens joined them last week when he sent a letter to ODOT requesting the Hopple Street interchange work move forward even if it was going to "inconvenience" the school's commuters.