INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels announced in a press release Tuesday that Indiana will break ground on the east-end crossing of the Ohio River Bridges Project in August.

According to the release, the Indiana Department of Transportation will advertise for bids today to construct a portion of the project — a $5.5 million road extension that will ultimately connect the River Ridge Commerce Center to Interstate 265 and the future east-end bridge.

While the construction will not be on one of the direct approaches, nor the east-end bridge, INDOT Spokesman Will Wingfield said it is associated with what is known as section six of the bridges project.

“It’s part of the larger Indiana approach to the east-end bridge,” he said.

The road being bid is a 3,000-foot extension of Old Salem Road and a 170-foot two-span bridge. The road between River Ridge and the port will cross over the proposed I-265 approach.

According to INDOT, limiting the scope of the early work streamlines permitting issues and provides more flexibility to the future contractor building the rest of the east-end bridge approach. When the east-end portion of the Ohio River Bridges project is finished, Old Salem Road will connect with I-265 and will be the first Indiana exit north of the new span.

While the road and the bridge, which are designed to accommodate heavy trucks that serve the nearby Port of Indiana-Jeffersonville and the River Ridge Commerce Center, are being bid separately, it is still part of the overall cost for Indiana’s portion of the bridges project, Wingfield said.

Indiana is responsible for designing and building the $1.3 billion east-end portion of the bridges project, while Kentucky will construct a new downtown bridge and reconstruct Spaghetti Junction.

Bids will be opened on or about July 11, with a groundbreaking set for August and work on this preliminary phase expected to be completed by June 2013.

“This bid letting is an important first step toward completing the east-end crossing by 2018,” Daniels said in the release. “When Gov. [Steve] Beshear, Mayor [Greg] Fischer and I said last year that we intended to start work as early as possible we weren’t kidding.”
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