I have a problem. I cannot locate any evidence that there was ever any open public meetings that led to the idea of building a second Downtown bridge in Louisville as part of the Ohio River Bridges Project.

Certainly the ORBP site should provide a record for such meetings, but they aren't there. The meetings that they do remark on are the following:

"A Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) was published in Nov. 2001 analyzing nine specific bridge locations in one- and two-bridge combinations. Public hearings were held in Indiana and Kentucky, and more than 5,000 comments were received on the DEIS." (Source) This, of course, came after the development of the apparent top-down non-public-involved concept for building a second Downtown bridge. These hearings were about the environmental impact of various solutions, not about whether building a second Downtown bridge was necessary.

This page lists meeting summaries for the Downtown Bridge, and the only meetings that were reasonably public were the "Open Houses", the earliest of which was in September 2005, well after the decision to construct the second Downtown bridge was made. This was about having the public comment on the bridge designs, not whether the second Downtown bridge was necessary.


So, apparently (unless somebody can provide evidence to the contrary), there was never any public involvement that led to the idea of a second Downtown bridge. On top of that, the Louisville Metro Council has never had an opportunity to weigh in on this matter, as it came into existence after the top-down decision to build this bridge was made.

What makes this matter all the more relevant is that there has been polling that shows that Louisvillians overwhelmingly prefer the construction of the East End Bridge over its Downtown counterpart.

Please, if I am ignorant about this, inform me and everyone else. When did the people in the Louisville metropolitan area ever clamor for a second Downtown bridge?

Steve Magruder — LouHI Administrator and web programmer


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More food for thought...

Have you ever thought much about the second Downtown bridge's impact? Even beyond the vast expansion of Spaghetti Junction into a 23-lane wide (and in some spots, 4-road-high) Fettuccine Junction?

Well, back in December, Broken Sidewalk did a brilliant report about how I-65 would have to be dramatically widened to service this new bridge. I won't offer my opinion beyond that — please just read the article — it's an eye-opener.

Also check out LouHI's ongoing poll: "With the East End Bridge in place, would you support building a second Downtown Bridge?"

Currently, this option has 71.4% support: "No, it's unnecessary and thus financially wasteful".