CINCINNATI — Two weeks ago when a pair of semi-trucks crashed on the I-75 bridge over the Ohio River it sent a huge fireball to the sky fueled by one of the truck’s payload of chemicals.
After the fire was out and the bridge’s steel and the concrete decks cooled major damage was discovered, but it was fixable. “It was significant but the structural integrity of the bridge is intact, said Jack Marchbanks, ODOT Director. The bridge remained closed while detours were set and safety investigations began.
Marchbanks, a Dayton native, is very familiar with the Brent Spence Bridge, known for its double-decker design that links southern Ohio to northern Kentucky. He remembers riding on the Brent Spence bridge when he was a child in the 1960′s. Now he leads the state agency in charge of keeping roads and bridges safe.
The aging bridge was state-of-the-art when it was built 57 years ago, but today it is considered among the most dangerous in the nation and a notorious traffic bottleneck producing headaches for tens of thousands of drivers of cars and trucks every day.
After days of detailed inspection by structural engineers, the bridge was declared repairable and crews went to work. Even though the waterway it spans is the Ohio River most of the bridge belongs to the Commonwealth of Kentucky because most of the river is in the Bluegrass State, not Ohio. The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet set a challenging goal for completion of the repairs. “By Christmas we’re gonna get it fixed,” said KYTC Project Manager Cory Wilson.
For its part, while the bridge is shut down, ODOT is also on the job doing repair work on the approach lanes that otherwise would have required lane closures and more backups. “A lot of time we do it during the night shift but with no traffic we can do it and get a whole lot more done,” said Milan Lanier of ODOT.
The crash, detours, traffic delays and multi-million dollar repair work have prompted renewed discussion of the need for a new bridge. Kevin Burch of Jet Express trucking in Dayton said the bridge is important to the Miami Valley economy because of the amount of goods that go over it. He said the bridge is among the worst in the nation and brings back memories of the 2007 bridge collapse in Minneapolis that killed 13 people and injured 145. “It’s unfortunate that we have to have a bridge collapse or catastrophe. Why didn’t we talk about it?” Burch questioned.
For more than 25 years replacing the Brent Spence Bridge has been an on-again, off-again priority of national interest. In 2011 President Barack Obama held a press conference at the foot of the bridge and campaigned on a pledge to replace it, along with passage of a massive infrastructure program. The bridge replacement plan went nowhere. In June of 2017 President Donald Trump held a similar event on the banks of the Ohio River, promising a huge infrastructure program. Trump did not even mention the bridge that was just out of sight downstream in the center of Cincinnati and his massive program to repair bridges and dams was not adopted by Congress.
In 2014 Ohio lawmakers backed a plan for a new bridge to be paid for with a toll on cars and trucks. Although that still does not sit well with the trucking industry. “Tolling is not always the answer. When the fuel is costing us so little compared to what we can make why can’t we put that back into the livelihoods of the people who make the roads and who works for the trucking companies?” Burch said.
As 2020 prepares to expire and the federal government is pouring more money into repairing the fire-charred bridge, there is hope that a new bridge will come someday. The current plan is to build a new bridge just to the west of Brent Spence and to use both of them to handle the traffic flow. The problem now is funding the $2.5 billion dollar project. “Kentucky and Ohio will have to help themselves. We don’t expect to get a $2.5 billion gift card from the federal government for Christmas this year or next year. So we will have to come up with a way to finance that bridge. I’m confident that we will make that happen,” Marchbanks said. He said Gov. Mike Dewine is continuing to talk about it with Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.
Cox Media Group
