Olentangy Trail detour continues until December
 

Reprinted from an article by Doug Caruso for The Columbus Dispatch – 9/1/2010

Despite construction that has closed the Olentangy Greenway Trail through Ohio State University's campus, fans walking to Ohio Stadium from West Campus parking lots will find the path open Thursday night near Drake Union and Morrill Tower.
 

Bicyclists who use the trail to ride from Worthington and Clintonville to Downtown will have to continue to use detours until mid-December, when construction on the trail is scheduled to be done.
 

For the game against Marshall University on Thursday night, small portions of the trail and two pedestrian overpasses crossing Cannon Drive near Morrill Tower will remain open. About 8,000 people who park across the Olentangy River and use a pedestrian bridge to get across in that area can use the overpasses to get to the stadium, said Kevin Koesters, Ohio State's project manager for construction near the towers.
 

One Cannon Drive overpass was recently replaced, and the other is to be demolished Friday, he said. Paths for pedestrians will have to be refigured for future games.
 

For bicyclists who use the trail to commute Downtown, having the Olentangy Greenway closed through Ohio State all summer has been like having a chunk of Rt. 315 shut down for drivers. Bicyclists have had to find their way through detours since spring as the university makes $728,000 in improvements to the trail between Woody Hayes and John H. Herrick drives.
Before the construction began, the OSU portion of the trail was one of the roughest. John Gideon, vice president of Consider Biking, which encourages cycling in central Ohio, said he found a detour he likes for commuting between Worthington and Downtown.
 

He stays on Neil Avenue until he gets to Buttles Avenue and then turns east to Park Street and follows Park and Front streets into Downtown. The official detour sends riders from Neil west to the trail along King Avenue.  "I love this alternate route," Gideon said of his version. "I may continue using it even when they're done with the trail."

Gary Collier, Ohio State's project manager for the trail, said riders should see a big improvement when it opens. A new section of path along the river east of Drake Union will let riders zoom through campus without tangling with pedestrians around the towers or traffic on Cannon Drive, he said.
 

Gideon said he's glad the project will wrap up this year. "I was afraid they were going to go through a whole other season of having it closed," he said. "This is a major commuter route."