Upper Arlington is working on plans to revamp Zollinger Road, which could involve narrowing the roadway and adding bike lines.
However, the city is considering feedback from residents before making a decision on the future of the roadway, City Engineer Aaron Scott said in an interview with The Dispatch. Construction is expected to start in 2027.
“It’s one of our larger roadways, one of our bigger collector streets, so we wanted to make sure if we do it, we do it right — and if residents have changes they want to see, we can incorporate those,” Scott said.
Plans to work on Zollinger Road have been in discussion since at least 2016, when the city identified that it would need to be repaved within about a decade. Adding multi-modal improvements could make sense on the roadway, Scott said, but feedback from residents is shaping the future of the project.
The city held a public feedback session in 2022 ahead of submitting a grant application. At the time, one of the largest concerns residents shared was speeding on the road, Scott said. The city also held a public meeting July 10 at the Bob Crane Community Center and is collecting feedback from an interactive map.
Zollinger Road serves as a collector road to help people move from residential streets to larger arterial roads, such as Riverside Drive, Tremont Road and Northwest Boulevard. However, Zollinger Road, which traverses the middle of the city from east to west, is one of the larger collector streets in the city with two lanes in both directions.
The city received over $3.3 million in a grant for construction of the project of federal dollars via the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, which requires at least a 20% matching fund from the city.
Although some federal funding has been canceled or put in limbo since the start of the Trump administration in January, Scott said construction funding has already been allocated.
While specific changes to the road are still to be determined, the project will include adding streetlights to Zollinger Road between Tremont Road and Riverside Drive — the only segment of the road without lighting.
The northern half of Redding Road is under construction and went through a similar process as Zollinger Road, but the city did not receive any outside funding, Scott said. The city is narrowing the road from a four-lane road to a two-lane road, with one lane traveling in each direction.
Upper Arlington is not immediately working on other plans to revamp other streets in the city, but that could come up in future years as the city identifies roadways that need maintenance, Scott said.
Anna Lynn Winfrey covers the western suburbs for the Columbus Dispatch. She can be reached at awinfrey@dispatch.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Zollinger Road in Upper Arlington could see major changes soon
Reporting by Anna Lynn Winfrey, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
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