Hang in there, Brent Spence Bridge. Your long, lonely wait for a companion is finally nearing its end.
Officials broke ground Friday on construction of a second bridge next to the span that carries I-71 and I-75 between Ohio and Kentucky across the Ohio River.
The Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments, OKI, says the Brent Spence handles roughly $1 billion in freight daily.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) were among those turning over the first ceremonial shovelfuls of dirt after decades of efforts by local elected leaders to get the project on the road.
“We know what has to take place here," DeWine said. "If you look at the numbers — 160,000 vehicles, 33,000 trucks every single day — a phenomenal amount of traffic is going through here... it is time."
A $1.63 billion federal grant by the Biden administration kickstarted the project anew in 2023. That grant was part of a larger bipartisan infrastructure plan.
Elected leaders underscored the role bipartisan cooperation played in getting the bridge funded.
"I actually showed up at a public event in Kentucky with Joe Biden," McConnell said of the announcement of that grant. "As leader of the opposition in the Senate, that's not something I routinely did."
The overall price tag for the companion bridge and changes along the highway corridor is expected to reach $4.4 billion. That’s up from the initial $3.6 billion estimate, in part due to a 60% hike in construction costs over the last six years, according to the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet.
Officials unveiled the design for the second bridge next to the Brent Spence in June 2025. Both decks of the bridge will be supported by a cabling system similar to the Abraham Lincoln Bridge in Louisville. No steelwork will connect the two decks of the bridge.
Northbound traffic on the new bridge will travel on the top deck rather than the bottom deck — the opposite of the existing Brent Spence Bridge.
“In many ways, this is our Eisenhower moment," Beshear said, referring to President Dwight D. Eisenhower's push to establish the federal highway system.
"We're showing that American drive and ingenuity are not a thing of the past. That when Americans come together, there is nothing we can't do; that the American dream is not dead."
Wages for the project's roughly 700 construction jobs are expected to start around $30 per hour. The project will generate an estimated 6 million hours of work.
Some groups have pushed for changes to the final design of the companion bridge and corridor overhaul, advocating for alternate transportation considerations and plans that would clear more space for development in downtown Cincinnati. They say that while traffic has increased since the bridge was originally built, it actually peaked in 2014 at 171,000 cars per day and has been declining slightly since then. OKI, meanwhile, says it estimates daily traffic will reach more than 217,00 vehicles a day by 2040.
The bridge itself is expected to be completed by 2031, with construction on the overall corridor changes projected to wrap up by 2033.
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