HENDERSON, Ky. - For years, the greatest obstacle in building a bridge across the Ohio River here for Interstate 69 has been summed up by a cost estimate that was developed a decade ago: $1.4 billion.
Now, a Henderson-Evansville I-69 advocacy group is presenting a modified vision for the project that it says could be built for approximately $800 million — roughly half the cost of the earlier proposal.
“It’s a pretty sizable reduction,” observed Henderson Mayor Steve Austin, a member of the group BridgeLink who shared the proposal Wednesday with The Gleaner.
“This is not a $1.4 billion project,” he declared. “It’s a $800 million project. That’s a lot more doable.”
The cost savings would come largely from modifying two aspects of the original proposal:
Constructing a four-lane, rather than a six-lane bridge, with narrower shoulders. It would be 83 feet wide instead of the original 130-foot-wide proposal.
Shaving three miles off a new I-69 roadway, or approaches, that would tie the bridge in with the existing Pennyrile Parkway at Henderson. The previous vision was to have I-69 swing more than a mile east of the Henderson city limits, crossing U.S. 60-East between Broadview and Pleasantview subdivisions; passing over Kentucky 351 west of Zion; and then crossing the Audubon Parkway before tying into the Pennyrile Parkway somewhere south of the Kentucky 425/South Bypass, a mile or two south of Henderson.
BridgeLink instead proposes having I-69 skirt Henderson’s eastern city limits, crossing U.S. 60-East just east of the railroad viaduct, then passing through farmland behind Balmoral Acres subdivision before tying into the U.S. 41-Bypass (between Kentucky 351 and the U.S. 60 cloverleaf) just north of where it connects with the Pennyrile.
Such a route would trim the length of the new roadway from 9.2 miles to 6.2 miles and reduce the number of interchanges that would be required from five to three by eliminating the need for interchanges at Kentucky 351 and the Audubon Parkway.
“It misses Audubon State Park, it misses the wetlands (along the Ohio River that are associated with the park) and goes between housing (subdivisions),” Austin said. “All these things are doable and they come in at slightly less than $800 million,” helped in part by reducing the estimated cost of design work and project contingency percentage to what he called “industry standards.”
The BridgeLink proposal for the bridge approach was one of nine that Kentucky and Indiana considered more than a decade ago, he noted. (Kentucky Transportation Cabinet engineers have also recently been looking at ways to reduce the length and cost of the approach route.)
As for reducing the bridge itself from six lanes to four, Austin said that would be comparable to the newly opened I-70 bridge across the Mississippi River at St. Louis, which he said handles traffic volumes comparable to an I-69 bridge here.
BridgeLink prepared the 20-page proposal with help from some engineering and heavy-construction firms that are members of the organization, Austin said.
The proposal was presented about three weeks ago to Indiana Gov. Steve Pence and last week to Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, along with transportation secretaries from the two state and other staff members, he said.
“Both governors are on board,” Austin said. “Both transportation departments are on board. Senators are on board. We’ve just got to figure out how to finance it.”
Long envisioned as a toll bridge, the mayor said the span could generate an estimated $380 million in toll receipts over 20 years if local light traffic (using transponders and prepaid accounts) were charged $1 to cross, other light vehicles were charged $2 and heavy trucks paid $5.
BridgeLink also contends that the cost of maintenance on the U.S. 41 Twin Bridges could be reduced if all heavy trucks were required to use the I-69 bridge; Austin said getting heavy trucks off U.S. 41 might also make it feasible to eventually convert the 82-year-old northbound U.S. 41 bridge for use by pedestrians and bicyclists only.
BridgeLink is working with the I-69 Caucus in Washington, D.C., including U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield of Kentucky and U.S. Rep. Larry Bucshon of Indiana, to find funds for the I-69 bridge project.
One proposal, called “repatriotization,” is aimed at cutting corporate income tax policies on profits earned overseas by U.S. companies to bring those earnings to America instead of parking them in foreign banks, free from U.S. taxation. Increased tax revenues could “go toward major infrastructure projects” such as an I-69 bridge, Austin said.
U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, meanwhile, has proposed suspending Davis-Bacon Act provisions requiring contractors of federally funded construction projects to pay government-determined local prevailing wage rates. “That would open several billion dollars (in reduced construction costs) over 10 years for projects (such as the I-69 bridge) — like $26 billion — and would probably save 10 to 12 percent on the cost of building this bridge,” Austin said.
“What kind of chance that has of passing, I don’t know,” he said. “It’s not something BridgeLink is for or against; we’re just in favor of anything that helps get the bridge built.”
“The next step is to get an environmental (impact) study funded,” Austin said. That would cost an estimated $3 million and take 12 to 18 months to complete, he said.
“That would be done hopefully within the next year,” the mayor said. “We think Kentucky and Indiana would share that cost.”
In the meantime, “We’re going to try to build momentum on this thing,” Austin said, saying that construction an I-69 bridge is vital to the future growth of Henderson and Evansville.
“It may be the biggest thing to ever happen” here, he said.