The Fourth Street Bridge between Covington and Newport is one step closer to being replaced.
Officials with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet on Tuesday announced the timeline for the replacement bridge carrying Route 8 across the Licking River.
Demolition work on the current bridge will take place early next year, KYTC says, and wrap up next spring. After that, construction will commence and the new bridge will likely be completed in roughly two-and-a-half years.
Initially, officials intended to leave the current bridge up during a portion of the construction of its replacement for bicycle and pedestrian traffic.
But KYTC's Cory Wilson says safety concerns about routing pedestrians through a construction zone have changed that.
"The revised plan that we've put in place now is to drop the existing bridge and then build in place with the existing bridge," he said.
In addition to safety considerations, KYTC says the change will speed up the project by roughly a year.
Automotive traffic will be re-routed, mostly to the Girl Scout Bridge to the south. Those without cars will be able to take a shuttle between the two cities, Wilson says.
"Right now our tentative shuttle plan is, we'd have a stop in Newport and a stop in Covington," he said. "We'd have a shuttle with bicycle and wheelchair accessibility that would transport people free of charge near the ends of the bridge."
The current bridge was built in 1936 and is at the end of its life. It's narrow, with very poor pedestrian infrastructure. It also can't accommodate the weight of buses used by the Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky.
The replacement span will remedy those issues. The arched design chosen in 2023 includes four lanes for automotive traffic — up from the current two lanes — as well as 12-foot shared use pedestrian and cycling paths on both sides. It also will be able to accommodate public transit.
While some Northern Kentucky residents advocated for a somewhat smaller three-lane design, KYTC says it chose the extra lane to account for potential future traffic growth.
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