Fort Washington Way connects with Lytle Tunnel
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.