commute to OSU (Columbus, Upper Arlington, Dublin: 2015, house, neighborhoods)

[tennispanda]

Which neighborhoods have good housing and schooling options and are less than a 20 min drive to OSU? Looking for more updated home around 3500 sq ft, convenient to grocery, shopping, and restaurants.


Is traffic bad from Dublin or New Albany? Which directions has most road options leading to OSU in the morning and evening? Which side of the 270 loop is less congested?

[Rosebush1]

OSU people live all over.
UA is the best located suburb but you will get the least house for the money.

All the suburbs have a degree of sprawl, as does OSU. It is hard to generalize about commute times. You neeed to drive it yourself, point A to Point B, depending on where the house is located.

Dublin would be closer than New Albany. During rush hour traffic the Dublin commute would be 20-30 minutes. In the last couple of years there have been significant road improvements in the area.
I would add ten minutes for New Albany commutes.
My two favorite suburbs are Dublin and New Albany.

Clintonville is very popular. Lots of OSU people live there. Columbus public Schools are a negative but lots of people choose private or parochial schools.

Search this board for lots of comparative opinions.

[danielle_pal]

I would say the commute is equal from new albany or Dublin. Dublin is much larger with 3 high schools. I am biased but new albany is more beautiful and charming.

[wrightflyer]

Depending on where in Dublin you are, New Albany will either be farther or closer. Same goes the other way around. If you look at technical centers of these towns, such as Dublin at US-33 and Perimeter or Old Dublin inside I-270 vs. New Albany's old section and neighboring Market Center, Dublin is closer by far. BUT, Dublin also sprawls well NW past the Old Dublin area up US-33 and well pass I-270. So, those factors have to come into play as well. I-670 can be a parking lot through downtown, but Morse Road can get you across town somewhat quickly once you pass Easton. Then you can cut down I-71 or High Street. There are also a number of back roads from the Dublin area, but if outside I-270, you'll need to find ways across that highway, across the Scioto River and around certain highway exits and town centers.

If you have a high 6, low 7-figure price point, Upper Arlington would probably be your best bet. A 3500 square foot updated home will be easy to find, but they will have original build dates of the 1900's-1940's South of Lane, and 1950's-1990's in much of the remainder of Upper Arlington. The South of Lane homes will be highest dollar.

For I-270 congestion, its hard to say with the rotation of projects on the beltway. It used to always be the northern outerbelt, until the OH-315/US-23/I-71 stretch was fixed. Now the western outbelt from I-70 north to US-33 is choking from its widening project. Even with all that said, I think the northern outerbelt is still by far the most congested just due to the direction of sprawl into Delaware County and people coming down I-71 and jumping over to US-23 and OH-315 or continuing towards Dublin.

Between the time I had a car at OSU, in the late 2000's / early 2010's to when I moved back in 2015 and left earlier this year, traffic has steadily been worse, in part due to lack of good public transit and overall growth and the eventual sprawl that accompanies it. At least with Columbus sprawl, the metro is growing overall, with redevelopment happening in certain core neighborhoods, so it isn't just a hollowing out of the center.

As Danielle mentioned, New Albany has one excellent high school (and really just one general K-12 educational campus), versus three really good to excellent high schools that cover Dublin. My other suggestion would be checking out Hilliard Schools, and looking at places in Hilliard proper or Hilliard Schools that are in Dublin City proper. That may give some, in most cases, closer alternatives to farther reaches of Dublin or New Albany.