Columbus City Council approves street plan updates

Columbus City Council gave its first approval last night to the long-term plan of how roads and streets will develop in the community in the years ahead.

The city is updating its thoroughfare plan, which anticipates road and street additions in the future and how those streets will be classified. The classification determines the qualities of the street, such as whether a suburban street needs curbs and gutters, or if it can be considered a rural road, requiring only a drainage ditch.

City planning department director Jeff Bergman said the biggest change in the plan would be the route of a proposed north-south road that would parallel State Road 11 from Jonathan Moore Pike to County Road 450S but further to the west. Bergman said the benefits of a new road would be that it could be built to remain flooding free, while State Road 11 floods easily near Garden City, and the new road could be built wide enough to allow for bike and pedestrian improvements that would be nearly impossible along the existing State Road 11.

Bergman said that parcels along the proposed route can be protected from development, once the thoroughfare plan is approved.