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Fort Washington Way is an approximately 0.9-mile-long (1.4 km) section of freeway in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. The eight-lane divided highway is a concurrent section of Interstate 71 (I-71) and U.S. Route 50 (US 50) that runs from west to east from an interchange with I-75 at the Brent Spence Bridge to the Lytle Tunnel and Columbia Parkway. Fort Washington Way is named after Fort Washington, a fort that preceded the establishment of Cincinnati. One of the city's first freeways, it was conceived in 1946 as the Third Street Distributor in conjunction with a major urban renewal project along the riverfront. It opened in 1961 after one of the most expensive road construction projects per mile in the United States. Fort Washington Way's complex system of ramps made it the most crash-prone mile of urban freeway in Ohio. During the late 1990s, it was rebuilt with a simpler, more compact configuration, improving traffic safety and facilitating the riverfront's redevelopment as The Banks. Route description Fort Washington Way begins at a complex interchange with I-75 at the northern end of the Brent Spence Bridge. It ends a short distance later at a fork in the road. I-71 curves eight degrees to the north before entering the Lytle Tunnel, while US 50 continues east on Columbia Parkway via the Third Street Viaduct. The entire highway lies in a 25-foot-deep (7.6 m), 150-foot-wide (46 m) trench parallel to Second Street and Pete Rose Way to the south and Third Street to the north. Together, these roadways form a collector-distributor system. There are five overpasses along Fort Washington Way; the overpasses at either end are cable-stayed. The Riverfront Transit Center runs parallel to Fort Washington Way, in a tunnel beneath Second Street. The Cincinnati Bell Connector streetcar system crosses over Fort Washington Way twice, on Walnut and Main streets, with a stop on Second Street above the Riverfront Transit Center. A 30-foot-tall (9.1 m) flood wall and pumping station protect Fort Washington Way from Ohio River floodwaters. The pump is activated when the river reaches 60 feet (18 m), as measured from the Roebling Suspension Bridge. The Fort Washington Way corridor also includes a combined sewer overflow mitigation system and fiber optic backbone. History Background and planning The eastern terminus of present-day Fort Washington Way was originally the site of an army fortress, Fort Washington, from 1789 to 1803. During much of the 19th century, the area south of Third Street was a working-class neighborhood, the Central Bottoms, which had 10,000 residents. From the 1870s to the mid-20th century, the Bottoms gave way to warehouses as residents moved to the West End. By 1940, the Bottoms had a population of only 1,700 and was mostly vacant. The Bottoms was inundated during the Ohio River flood of 1937. After the flood, the United States Army Corps of Engineers called for a flood wall to protect the downtown area but not the Bottoms. Areas below Third Street were declared too costly to protect from flooding. Meanwhile, the city's City Planning Commission was considering the issues of increasing automobile congestion on downtown city streets and the deterioration of the central riverfront. In 1946 and 1947, the commission issued reports proposing a "Third Street Expressway Distributor" linking the city's various entry points: The junction of the Millcreek, Northeast and Dixie Expressways north of the Ohio River and immediately south of the Cincinnati Central Business District demands a design treatment of heroic nature. Free flow of traffic must be maintained. Complicated interlocking traffic movements should be kept independent as far as possible. Therefore an elaborate interchange to provide for both through movement and local distribution of traffic is necessary. Such a facility has been devised and is called the Third Street Distributor. ... The Distributor is thus not limited to a clearly-defined section between two exact points, but rather is an elongated intersection or interchange for the expressways. In 1948, City Council adopted the Cincinnati Metropolitan Master Plan, which incorporated the Third Street Distributor along with long-range plans to completely redevelop the Bottoms as a mixed-use development, including a new baseball stadium to replace Crosley Field. The distributor would double as a flood wall for the central business district. Planners estimated that, together, the three freeways "would divert between 60 and 70 per cent of the 88,000 vehicles which enter Cincinnati's business district [daily]". With bridge traffic across the Ohio River making up only 14% of total traffic entering and exiting Cincinnati's core area, the commission found "no valid reason for aligning the two Expressways directly with bridges across the Ohio River". Instead, the Mill Creek and Northeast expressways would both connect to the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge via elevated ramps. The distributor would direct downtown-bound traffic directly to parking lots and garages. It was projected to handle the bulk of downtown traffic in 1970. (In the 1960s, a significant increase in interstate traffic would necessitate the construction of the Brent Spence Bridge as a direct connection to the freeways.) Pioneering urban planner Ladislas Segoe, who served as a general consultant for the city's Master Planning Division, had urged the city to connect the Mill Creek and Northeast freeways with a Liberty Street distributor in Over-the-Rhine, instead of building a "great wall" between the riverfront and the central business district. However, downtown department store owners successfully pushed for the riverfront highway, threatening to leave for the suburbs otherwise. The Citizens' Development Committee, headed by Cincinnati Gas & Electric executive Reed Hartman, championed a $16 million bond drive to fund the riverfront redevelopment project, which included the Third Street Distributor. Construction On August 8, 1955, construction began on the first of many "piers" in the distributor system, a one-quarter-mile (0.40 km) connector between the Louisville & Nashville Bridge and the Third Street Viaduct. Work began in earnest with the passage of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, which allocated federal funds to the $21 million project. In January 1958, demolition began on Third Street buildings, including St. Philomena's Church, to make way for the distributor. The Cincinnati Times-Star editorial board proposed that the new highway be named "Fort Washington Freeway". The fort's gunpowder magazine had been rediscovered a few years earlier on land near the highway's path. Supporters of the Fort Washington name included the Cincinnati Enquirer editorial board and Mrs. William T. Buckner, a representative of the Daughters of the American Revolution and Daughters of 1812 whose great-grandfather William Henry Harrison once served at the fort. On February 20, 1958, .... Discover the Sonia Hirt Diane Zahm popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Sonia Hirt Diane Zahm books.