By now, many in our region have gotten to experience the construction marvel that is the 16-mile Portsmouth Bypass. The ultra-modern four-lane highway connects two of the area’s main arteries – U.S. 52 and U.S. 23 – making a much faster and easier commute for work or pleasure.
Motoring along that road with its many hills and valleys, through mountain passes with breathtaking vistas, one recurring thought comes to mind: “How the heck did they do that?”
It’s a project more than a half century in the making, getting its birth when Congress passed the Appalachian Regional Development Act in 1965. A key component of that Act, the Appalachian Development Highway System (ADHS), was created expressly to provide the residents of Appalachia the same growth opportunities afforded the rest of the nation through the interstate highway system. The interstate system largely missed Appalachia because of the high cost of building roads through the mountainous terrain. Anyone familiar with the hilly, forested land in Scioto County knows it was hard to get from one side of the county to the other without traveling a network of winding, two-lane backroads. But no longer.
The $634 million Portsmouth Bypass (now known as the Southern Ohio Veterans Memorial Highway/State Route 823) is the final link of the 3,090-mile ADHS.
Why did it take so long? One just has to look at the terrain in Scioto County to understand.
Todd Thatcher, the superintendent on the job for Beaver Excavating, has worked on other highway construction projects before, but nothing of this magnitude, and mostly in flat northern Ohio. “The biggest challenge was definitely the terrain,” Thatcher said, “And the extremely tight schedule.”
Moving mountains is neither easy nor cheap, and the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) spent many years looking at possible routes and alignments. Because it is part of the ADHS, the project needed to maximize the available land for the region’s economic development. So, a route that may have been easier or less expensive to build was removed from the table. A slew of feasibility studies, environmental impact studies and public comment periods narrowed the alternatives further.
The route that remained on the table in 2002 included the important factors – connecting south central Ohio’s two major highways (and thus Interstate 64 through Kentucky and West Virginia) and having access to the county’s airport at Minford, which is accomplished through the Shumway Hollow egress/ingress of Ohio 823.
With the plan finally in place, real estate purchasing began in 2006, with the state buying up thousands of acres of the hill and valley land carved out over centuries by the Scioto and Ohio rivers.
“This is the largest single earthwork project in Ohio, ever,” said Kathleen Fuller, public information officer for ODOT’s District 9. “It involved moving 20 million cubic yards of earth (95 percent rock and 5 percent dirt). To visualize that, if you loaded all of that earth into school buses and lined them up end to end, the buses would stretch from Minford to Las Vegas.”
Then there was the massive tree removal aspect, construction of 23 bridges and five interchanges, and, basically, cutting through mountains. Who can do that kind of work? The local labor force in Scioto and surrounding counties, that’s who.
The majority of the 300 people who did most of the work on the bypass live within 40 miles of the site, said Mark Johnson, business manager for the Tri-State Building Trades Union based in Ashland. “We have great, experienced, hard-working people here. We did not have to look elsewhere for the people to build this road.”
The following unions all had people working on the project throughout the three-and-a-half years of construction: Laborers 83 in Portsmouth; Operating Engineers Local 18 (state of Ohio); Carpenters Local 437 of Portsmouth; Ironworkers Local 769 of Ashland; Teamsters Local 100 from Cincinnati; and Cement Masons Local 132, Hanging Rock.
First up: local work force members (Laborers and Operating Engineers) brought down and removed an enormous number of trees and cleared the land beneath them. “That was a huge job,” said Jim McGraw, of Laborers 83, “and our guys did it well and safely.”
Next came a really fun part – rock cuts. “If you look at the hills on either side as you drive through, you see all the rock cuts. They are impressive, especially the one at (Ohio) 140,” Johnson said.
To cut through rock, workers first drill down into each hill/mountain. Next, they load those immovable objects with explosives and blast away – all done very precisely, of course. The explosion moves the rock enough that a dozer can go in and finish the destruction.
Beaver Excavating, one of the project’s main contractors (the other was John R. Jurgensen Co.), brought in about 400 loads of explosives to blow up all the mountains in the bypass’ path. Then all that rock had to be removed (see previous school bus comparison). The rock and dirt are reused in a variety of ways. Some of it goes into the valleys – there were 81 valley fields in the project site, some of them 200 feet deep. There’s also a man-made mountain over on Lucasville-Minford Road composed of parts of the exploded ones.
Getting compactible soil throughout the 16-mile stretch of highway was the next step. This part is crucial, Johnson explained, because without a solid foundation, any road that is built will fail long before its expected lifespan. “The non-compactible soil gets moved to the side. Some of it is reused as topsoil,” he added.
Drains, culverts and storm sewers are also installed at this phase, making sure that rain will drain away from the road and not cause a hazard for those traveling it. After that comes paving and all the concrete work, including bridges and medians. The Ohio 823 project also includes a large number of concrete and metal barrier walls along many parts of it.
The entire project involved very challenging and dangerous work, like building bridges across rivers at heights of 500 feet. The local labor force completed the work on time and safely, which is a big deal. “Safety is a very big thing. That’s what I preach all the time,” Johnson said. “Safety issues are a huge cost to the contractors and to ODOT. Out of the three-and-a-half years on this project, we only had 5 OSHA recordables. That’s pretty good.”
At the dedication in December, Beaver vice president Jack Ford praised the skills and work ethic of the trade members employed on the project, adding the local labor force would stack up against any other, anywhere in the country.
“The people around there, they want to go to work and get a paycheck to support their family. It’s a very respectable thing, to be a member of a trade group in this area,” Johnson said.
Like many others in the Tri-State, Johnson travels Ohio 823 every time he goes from his home in Lucasville to his office in Ashland and to other locations near and far – knocking 10 to 15 minutes off his drive each way. “I love driving it. It’s amazing to look at. And because I know what was involved in building it and was there when it was done, it gives me an interesting perspective.”
Another First: Ohio's First Public-Private Funded Highway Project
Not only is the new Southern Ohio Veterans Memorial Highway the largest earthmoving project in Ohio highway history, but it is also the first of its kind in terms of how it was developed and funded.
Knowing the cost of the project would be massive ($634 million) and because it was important to finish this last leg of the Appalachian Development Highway System as soon as possible, the Ohio General Assembly in 2011 gave ODOT the go ahead to seek funding mechanisms through the private sector. This is referred to as a P3 – public-private partnership. Funding the project through a P3 meant it could be constructed all at once, instead of in phases, and thus completed at least a decade sooner – up to 17 years sooner by some estimates.
In late 2013, ODOT awarded the highway contract to the Portsmouth Gateway Group (PGG), which includes the project’s two main contractors, Beaver Excavating and John R. Jurgensen Company, along with several design, infrastructure development and capital investment firms.
A P3 project is also allowed to write new specifications and adopt innovations from highway projects around the U.S., something ODOT could not have done. After beating out two other bidders, PGG set a five-year design and construction timeline for the Portsmouth bypass, which opened to the public in December 2018.
According to the contract, PGG, which has a staff of 10, is responsible for not only designing and building the road, but also operating and maintaining it for 35 years, through 2053.
“They’ve already started routine maintenance,” said Kathleen Fuller, public information officer for ODOT District 9. “They have to hand it back to ODOT in as good or better condition as when it opened.”
ODOT has complete access to PGG’s online systems, so the agency can keep an eye on the maintenance of the road and all its assets – guardrails, signs, etc. The only thing PGG is not responsible for is snow and ice removal.
It won’t be long before the new bypass spurs other improvements and economic development in Scioto County, Fuller predicted, which was another reason it was important to get it completed as quickly as possible.
Quite a bit of development is anticipated in the area near the Shumway Hollow Exit, which is adjacent to the Greater Portsmouth Regional Airport at Minford, including an aviation technology school. The county has already done some infrastructure work there. In 2017, PureCycle Technologies broke ground on a $120 million polypropylene recycling facility on the site of the recently closed Dow Chemical plant near Ironton. Company officials said the Portsmouth Bypass factored heavily into their location decision because it makes the drive from Ironton to Columbus about 15 minutes faster.
“This highway is going to spur economic development all across the area,” Fuller said.
