Governor: Ohio River bridge repairs to take months
Work to repair an ailing Ohio River bridge shut down between Kentucky and Indiana will cost about $20 million, and it will take about six months to fix and reopen the heavily traveled span.
Work to repair an ailing Ohio River bridge shut down between Kentucky and Indiana will cost about $20 million, and it will take about six months to fix and reopen the heavily traveled span.
Commuters traveling Monday between Indiana and Kentucky became mired for miles on end in unfamiliar travel patterns with few alternatives as the emergency closure of a bridge crossing the Ohio River left only two spans remaining, detouring tens of thousands.
A committee of the Bloomington-Monroe County Metropolitan Planning Organization decided Friday to delay voting on the highway's hotly debated Monroe County extension until November.
Opponents of Indiana's nearly $3 billion Interstate 69 extension are urging a southern Indiana planning board to keep the highway out of its transportation plan despite the state's warning that doing so could endanger federal funding for local projects.
The Indiana Department of Transportation will close the busy span over Interstate 465 for five months instead of seven.
The interstate loop around Indianapolis was formally renamed for the cruiser sunk in shark-infested waters of the Pacific Ocean during the closing days of World War II.
Indiana's 142-mile extension of Interstate 69 between Indianapolis and Evansville will siphon hundreds of millions of dollars away from other road and bridge projects in coming years, according to a report from an environmental group.
Citizens for Appropriate Rural Roads and the I-69 Accountability Project said the road expansion would violate federal environmental laws.
In the latest turn in the battle of wills over the $3 billion highway connecting Indianapolis to Evansville, department officials nix plan because it excludes Bloomington-area section of the expansion.
State highway officials say they hope to begin building a key section of Interstate 69 to Bloomington by the end of 2011 after releasing the final environmental impact statement for the stretch.
Getting onto and off of Interstate 69 at the 116th Street exit has long been a nail-biting experience, but traffic planners are about to propose reconstruction to unplug the bottleneck.
Officials who want to build two new bridges over the Ohio River and redo a downtown interchange announced Thursday that they've found ways to cut the cost of the project by more than $1 billion.
Groups that perennially press the Indiana Department of Transportation to broaden its vision of mobility beyond highways now accuse the agency of “significant ineptitude or willful disregard” in eliciting public input.
Indiana highway officials are trying to sort out the impact of a Bloomington-area group's decision not to include a section of the $3 billion Interstate 69 extension in its local highway plan.
Opponents say bridges along the new, 142-mile highway extension would worsen flooding in southwestern Indiana.
The project is part of a larger effort to upgrade the road to interstate standards.
State officials have awarded Bloomington-based Crider and Crider Inc. a $25 million contract to build a 4-mile section of the Interstate 69 extension that will run from Indianapolis to Evansville.
INDOT had already planned to replace the bridge as part of its “465/69 Northeast” rebuilding project. But the traffic-flow part of the plan drew the ire of some Castleton-area retailers.
State highway officials have awarded a LaPorte company a $98.8 million contract to build a nine-mile section of Indiana's planned Interstate 69 extension through Daviess County.
Environmental and citizens groups seek to stop construction of the 142-mile link between Evansville and Indianapolis, saying it will destroy valuable natural resources.