Kentucky’s emergency bridge work earns national honors
(The Center Square) – Emergency work needed to repair the Brent Spence Bridge late last year has earned a national award, Kentucky officials announced Friday.
The American Public Works Association named the project one of its Public Works Projects of the Year. That’s according to a release from Gov. Andy Beshear.
In the early morning hours of Nov. 11, a fiery crash between two trucks, one of which was carrying potassium hydroxide, on the span’s lower deck. The heat from the blaze damaged steel beams that support the upper deck as well as concrete on both decks.
As a result, the bridge, which serves as the main artery between northern Kentucky and Cincinnati, had to be shut down completely. That led to more than 160,000 vehicles daily needing to be rerouted across the region.
The association cited the collaboration between the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC), Michael Baker International and Kokosing Construction as the reason the work was a success. Repairs were completed in less than six weeks, allowing officials to reopen the bridge on Dec. 22, a day ahead of schedule.
“It would be hard to imagine a more challenging scenario,” Cabinet Secretary Jim Gray said in a statement. “Abrupt loss of a critical connection on one of the busiest commercial corridors in the eastern United States. A global COVID pandemic. And winter weather. We conquered this combination of factors by quickly assembling a great team, being innovative and then working night and day without letup.”
The federal government approved up to $12 million in emergency funding for the repair work, but the cost came in under budget at less than $5 million,
Beshear said the work of the Cabinet and construction crews turned “a crisis into an accomplishment.”
“The expert repairs not only led to the quick reopening of an economically significant corridor during a bustling holiday season, but it preserved the safe condition of a bridge that will remain in service for decades to come,” the governor said.
The incident sparked another round of calls from leaders in both states to build a companion bridge to the 57-year-old bridge, which is deemed functionally obsolete because of traffic safety concerns as it currently handles about twice as much traffic as initially intended.
Information from KYTC and the Ohio Department of Transportation estimates that congestion leads to more than 3.6 million hours of delays for passenger vehicles annually.
In a town hall in Cincinnati last month, President Biden even mentioned the need for addressing the bridge issue, just as President Trump did during his term.
Estimates have put the cost for a new bridge and related work at around $2.5 billion.
Funding for the new bridge could be coming from the $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act the Senate is considering. That spending bill includes $45 billion in grant funding for new bridges as well as the Bridge Investment Act, which was initially filed by U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio.
Portman’s bill calls for $12.5 billion, which would be doled out through competitive grants for projects to bolster existing bridges.
“I’m pleased that the Bridge Investment Act will be included in this landmark infrastructure agreement because this common-sense legislation will get us that much closer to a solution for the Brent Spence Bridge,” the senator said in a statement.
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