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The First Church of God may have the best advertising placement in the county: a billboard along Bypass Ohio 4 north of Symmes Road

The traffic there is so slow that I could write down the times of their services — Sundays at 9, 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. — and the choking, grinding traffic drives one to prayer.

I was several minutes into my race with fellow reporter Joshua Rinaldi. We were seeing whether, obeying all traffic laws, it was faster to take Ohio 4 or Bypass Ohio 4 during rush hour from one end north to the other.

I was on Bypass Ohio 4, and I wasn't moving.

The trek had started off well. The light turned green at the corner of Dixie Highway (Ohio 4) and the bypass as the clock ticked to 5:31 p.m. I kicked my Toyota Corolla up to 50 mph.

But shortly after coming to a halt at Port Union Road — the first of nine lights along the way, seven of them red — I learned that the speed limit is a tease akin to gas stations that go out of business but leave up the $2 per gallon prices.

After Tylersville Road, the speed limit soared up to 55 mph. The cars did not. A yellow Ford Mustang in front of me ambled along like a young, muscular colt penned in a backyard pasture.

Another stop at Hamilton-Mason Road. This won't happen in the future, according to Ohio Department of Transportation officials, once a "super street" replaces this intersection in 2012.

The complicated and controversial "super street" design includes four lanes traveling north and south on the bypass virtually unhindered, but requires U-turns to get off or cross the bypass.

After the on-ramps to Ohio 129, the Mustang turned left onto Princeton Road and a lucky Mercury Mountaineer took its place in front of me. "Lucky," I say, because the road opened up to two lanes — for maybe a quarter mile.

It was 5:45 p.m., and I was finally doing the speed limit. My sedan's engine hummed. I almost forgot about the contest and turned up a driving song on the radio.

At 5:47 p.m., I hit Ohio 4, now Hamilton-Middletown Road. It had been roughly 16 minutes. I pulled into Bob Evans restaurant to wait for the competition.

There, I met Bill Spry, who was nostalgic of the days when Bypass Ohio 4 was a real short cut. Now it's not, he said.

"Any way you go it's a mess," he said. "It's supposed to be a bypass. It should be a significant amount of time (shorter than Ohio 4)."

Contact this reporter at

(513) 820-2175 or

jsweigart@coxohio.com.

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