As I-69 has slowly worked its way down from Canada toward the Gulf of Mexico, the Ohio River has been the elephant in the room.
States all along the corridor have been building, upgrading or relabeling roads to create the border-to-border interstate route. Everyone knew bridges would be needed, but with a projected $1.4 billion price tag, no one knew how to make them come pass.
So no one talked about it. And no one did anything about it. And the highways north and south of the Ohio continued to grow.
On Wednesday, BridgeLink announced that not only had it been trying to address the bridge issue, but it had a plan to wrestle that elephant to the ground.
BridgeLink, a coalition of I-69 supporters from Southern Indiana and Western Kentucky had been studying the original federal route assessment, the current bridge plan and looking at other recently built bridges.
By doing that, the group developed a plan to slash that $1.4 billion bridge cost roughly in half.
The $1.4 billion route would have I-69 swing more than a mile east of the Henderson city limits before tying into the Pennyrile/Breathitt Parkway somewhere south of the Kentucky 425/South Bypass, a mile or two south of Henderson.
The proposed modified route would cross the Ohio slightly downriver of that path, skirt Henderson’s eastern city limits, crossing U.S. 60 just east of the railroad viaduct, then passing through farmland behind Balmoral Acres subdivision before tying into the U.S. 41-Bypass, between the U.S. 60 cloverleaf and Kentucky 351 just north of where it connects with the parkway.
That change would shave three miles off the route and eliminate the need to build interchanges at 351 and the Audubon.
The far more significant change was to the bridge itself — reducing the bridge’s width from three lanes in each direction to two.
The original plan calls for three 12-foot lanes with 14-foot shoulders on either side and a 30-foot median.
The modified proposal is for two 12-foot lanes with 10-foot shoulders and a 15-foot median.
BridgeLink modeled the proposed bridge on a new I-70 span recently built over the Mississippi River at St. Louis. BridgeLink said the I-70 bridge was chosen because models showed it and the I-69 bridge would carry a similar traffic load.
All the changes together are projected to save between $774 million and $900 million.
The significance of what BridgeLink has done cannot be overstated. I-69 has the potential to reshape the Tri-State, especially here on the southern side of the river.
There’s a reason Toyota built it’s Princeton plant where it did. The plant’s site is virtually where I-64, I-69 and U.S. 41 come together.
That’s no accident. With I-64 stretching from the East to West coasts and I-69 stretching from Canada to the Gulf, the Tri-State is perfectly positioned for massive economic growth as companies look for locations with that kind of distribution access.
Throw in ports along the Ohio, which offer global shipping access, an international trade zone at Evansville Regional Airport and plenty of farm land ripe for development and our region becomes amazingly attractive to industry.
Industry means jobs and money. Which in turn will offer the ability for us to improve education, infrastructure and the arts. Once those bridges are built, our community has the potential to grow into one that could rival other Ohio River cities such as Louisville, Cincinnati or Pittsburgh.
I-69 is the key to all that. And the bridges are the key to I-69.
So kudos to BridgeLink for its efforts to make the bridges a reality. In a world of gridlock and partisan politics, it’s refreshing to see a group of leaders working together for a common goal.
BridgeLink member and Henderson Mayor Steve Austin dropped by The Gleaner on Wednesday to make the proposal public.
As he was leaving, Austin quipped I-69 “may be the biggest thing to ever happen” here.
We agree.