Ohio River Bridge Reduced to Two Lanes
You have probably heard it time and time again: America’s infrastructure needs a lot of repair and replacement to avoid safety disasters, and infrastructure spending is the one thing both sides of the political aisle can agree upon.
However, truckers traveling across the Ohio River between Illinois and Kentucky via Interstate-24 are soon going to have their faith in infrastructure repair tested, as traffic on the bridge is brought to a crawl for the next three years.
Details
Replacing expansion joints, repairing structural steel, resurfacing pavement, and a new coat of paint are just a few of the plans set in place for the construction project over the Ohio River bridge.
In total, $38 million will be spent on refurbishing the passageway. While that all sounds fantastic, the real world implications are severe, as an already congested area has its throughput cut in half.
The plan is to work extensively on the bridge each year during the construction season–-March to October–and then leave the bridge in a state where it can be fully operational for the colder months, before resuming again the next year, repeating until the end of 2027.
This means that the bridge is expected to be fully operational during the busiest time of the year for trucking, but also for the immediate slow season that happens after.
The nearest detour for commercial trucks to cross the Ohio River is the U.S. 51 Ohio River Bridge in Cairo, Illinois. With an average of about 45 miles in detour distance between the two directions of travel, it may still be worth the extra time and added practical miles as the I-24 bridge finds itself slowing down to a crawl during the construction season.
Conclusion
While infrastructure repair is boring and very inconvenient, it is better than the alternative where a bridge becomes more difficult to pass with each passing year until it eventually snaps, with dozens of unfortunate vehicles falling into the river.
It would be great to have the best of both worlds: free-flowing traffic without having to worry about wear and tear, but that is not the reality of infrastructure management.
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