It has been something of a heady year for Evansville. Not only did Evansville arrange for the construction of a Downtown convention hotel and a new baseball/softball complex, but it landed a major Indiana University medical school in Downtown Evansville. And now we learn that a blue-ribbon panel on Transportation Infrastructure has identified an Interstate 69 bridge proposed to link Indiana and Kentucky as rated among the highest of future transportation projects.
It is the sort of ranking, when combined with other accomplishments of the city administration that should give Evansville confidence that it is moving ahead among other Indiana cities. The city’s reputation for progress should be growing.
Evansville Mayor Lloyd Winnecke is a member of the blue ribbon panel. He said Indiana Gov. Mike Pence accepted the recommendations of the report, although Winnecke pointed out that the report includes no funding for the project.
However, Winnecke said he is working to dispel a cost estimate of $1.4 billion for the bridge project. He said the actual cost for the bridge over the Ohio River should be closer to $700 million to $800 million.
Winnecke said he was pleasantly surprised at how other members of the commission saw the bridge’s importance. He said it is one of four “Tier 1” projects, which are rated as the most significant to the state.
“One of the beauties of the commission is that people really took time to research and read data that were presented in the project. In our minds in Southwestern Indiana, (the bridge) is a completion of I-69,” he said.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the Interstate 69 construction project, the state of Indiana is preparing for the link between Bloomington and Martinsville.
Whoever would have thought Indiana would reach this controversial leg of the interstate-type highway so soon? Not many years ago, Bloomington was seen as an almost insurmountable hurdle to the Evansville to Indianapolis highway, but now the highway is moving from Crane to Bloomington, and soon it will be traveling north toward Martinsville. The phase of I-69 from Crane to Bloomington is set to open late this year or in early 2015, Construction is expected to begin later this year on the Bloomington to Martinsville stretch.
And now the project comes full circle back around to the bridge crossing between Evansville and Henderson, Ky., once thought to be little more than a dream, much like the overall highway project. But former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels pushed the project unbelievably far and fast, and the Indiana Department of Transportation and Gov. Pence seem to have stepped up the pace. Hence, we are talking of the bridge in real terms, and not as just some sort of pipe dream.