COVINGTON, Ky. — There is growing optimism that a long awaited and much needed infrastructure project, not only for Kentucky, but for the whole country, could be finally moving forward.
Gov. Andy Beshear said the state is closer than ever to building a companion bridge for the Brent Spence Bridge in northern Kentucky.
The conversation about what to do with the bridge has been going on for decades.
But Mark Policinski, the CEO of the Ohio Kentucky Indiana Council of Governments, or OKI, said something feels different now.
OKI is the metropolitan planning organization for the Cincinnati region. The organization has authority over all surface transportation projects in the region. Any project that has a penny of federal money in it needs OKI’s approval, as Policinski put it.
“I can tell you this, having worked on this for almost two decades, this is the best of days for this project, realizing of course we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Policinksi said. “It is the poster child for projects in this country that need to be fixed so that we can compete economically. Enough money has been set aside that allows the states to go into a grant process to apply for this money.”
OKI is the metropolitan planning organization for the Cincinnati region. The organization has authority over all surface transportation projects in the region. Any project that has a penny of federal money in it needs OKI’s approval, as Policinski put it.
That he feels optimistic is good news, he said, because an update is long overdue.
The bridge was built in 1963 to handle 80,000 vehicles a day. It now handles double that. It was built to handle 3,000 trucks a day, and now handles 33,000. More than a billion dollars in goods are transported over the bridge every day.
“It is the most congested point in this region, in the states, and one of the most congested in the entire nation,” Policinski said. “It is monumentally important to the rest of this country when it comes to satisfying the economic demands of a global economy. It is very unsafe the way it is constructed right now.”
Kentucky and Ohio's governors, and transportation departments, have worked together for years, developing a plan to build a companion bridge, but the question of funding has always prevented the plan from progressing.
The infrastructure bill passed by Congress is a “game changer” though, Policinski said. Now it's up to the states to put together a plan to secure the funding that’s available to them, while also competing with other projects around the country.
That’s something Gov. Andy Beshear is pushing for in his budget proposal.
Beshear’s plan includes allocating nearly $185 million dollars over three years to meet a state match that will unlock $774.7 million in additional federal money from the Federal Highway Trust Fund, which would allow for nearly a billion dollars for road and bridge construction in Kentucky.
The governor said his 2022-2024 8.5 billion dollar biennial highway construction plan charts a path to start building the companion bridge, without tolls, which have been a sticking point for a lot of drivers here in Northern Kentucky.
It proposes a historic investment of $250 million from the state’s general fund for this and other major projects.
“And it will allow our application to the federal government for the brent spence bridge to say we have already budgeted for the entire state portion, if you give us the grant we’re applying for. In other words, we can say Kentucky has done its part. And this will get done without tolls if the federal government gives us the award we applied for,” Beshear said. “We are closer to meeting that goal than ever before. In fact, my budget goes above and beyond to support these projects.”
Given the history of this project, Policinski hesitated to give an estimate of when the construction of the companion bridge could actually happen. But, he said if everything comes together, the state could see construction start at the end of 2023.