Columbus Breaks Ground on Hoover Road Bridge in First LinkUS Construction as West Broad BRT Clears FTA Risk Review

Hoover Road Pedestrian Bridge Breaks Ground as First LinkUS Infrastructure Project

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Transforming the mobility landscape of Central Ohio, civic leaders with the Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA), Franklin County, and the City of Grove City celebrated the official groundbreaking of the Hoover Road Pedestrian Bridge in early October 2026. Representing the very first physical infrastructure project to enter active construction under the voter-supported LinkUS Transit and Growth Initiative, the multi-million-dollar grade-separated span will provide safe walking and biking connectivity across active rail lines, linking residential neighborhoods directly to transit lines, schools, and commercial corridors.

The groundbreaking marks the kickoff of LinkUS's Transit-Supportive Infrastructure (TSI) portfolio, which has allocated nearly $30 million across 37 sidewalk, shared-use path, and multimodal trail projects across the metropolitan area in 2026 alone.

West Broad Street BRT Passes Crucial FTA Risk Review at 90% Design

Concurrently, COTA published its official LinkUS Progress Report confirming that the flagship West Broad Street Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor reached 90 percent engineering design maturity and successfully passed the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) rigorous Capital Investment Grant Risk Assessment. The achievement positions the corridor to finalize multi-million-dollar federal Small Starts grant agreements ahead of heavy utility mobilization in 2027.

The project follows COTA’s early autumn systemwide rollout of Line 30, a high-frequency route linking Hilliard, Upper Arlington, The Ohio State University, and Downtown Columbus via Neil Avenue with 30-minute seven-day service, alongside newly extended late-night midnight service across all standard lines.

Pioneering High-Capacity Multimodal Mobility for Central Ohio

Regional planners and business leaders underscored that pairing rapid bus transit corridors with safe pedestrian bridges and extended bus frequencies creates an indispensable transit backbone as Central Ohio prepares for a projected population of 3.15 million residents by 2050.