The Brent Spence Boondoggle
Brent Spence Bridge with I-71/75 Corridor. (Click to enlarge. Source: Ohio Governor’s Office.)
The Brent Spence Bridge is the aging, but structurally sound, bridge that carries the Interstate 71/75 corridor over the Ohio River. This corridor is one of the country’s busiest trucking routes, with the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments (OKI) estimating that it carries nearly 3% of the nation’s GDP every year and approximately 160,000 vehicles every day.
In late February, Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio pledged to seek up to $2 billion dollars in federal funding to create a companion bridge across the Ohio River. The bridge has long been a political flash point, with lobbyists and government officials as far back as the Obama Administration repeatedly advocating to increase the capacity of the corridor. The arguments that advocates use for widening the corridor by creating a new companion bridge will be familiar to Strong Towns readers:
The bridge is structurally sound but functionally obsolete. “Functionally obsolete,” in this context, simply means that it can no longer accommodate the traffic volume, leading to an unacceptable Level of Service.
The increased commute time and impediment to freight traffic results in an economic loss to the region.
The infrastructure investment will be both economically productive in the long run, and create good paying jobs for workers in the region.
The Brent Spence Bridge has become a top target for the Infrastructure Cult to double down on Cincinnati’s past mistakes. Unfortunately, even the city’s new, young mayor, Aftab Pureval, seems to be on board. The current situation highlights the bipartisan nature of the Cult, however, with a Democratic governor in Kentucky and a progressive Democratic mayor in Cincinnati joining with the Republican governor of Ohio to advocate for the project. The CEO of OKI, Mark Policinski, has even gone so far as to say that “there is no debate that the situation calls for a new bridge.” Before consenting to cooperate with this project, city leaders in Cincinnati—leaders like Pureval, Councilman Mark Jeffreys, and others—should consider starting that debate. The Brent Spence Corridor project, which is essentially a standard highway-widening endeavor, simply repeats the errors of Cincinnati’s past, misallocating billions of dollars in regional infrastructure investment while exacerbating urban congestion and frustrating attempts to repopulate the disinvested urban core. It’s time for Cincinnati to Do the Math and stop worshipping at the altar of the Infrastructure Cult.
(Source: Wikimedia Commons.)
Is the Brent Spence Bridge “Obsolete”?
A critical component of the argument for the Corridor project is the idea that the Bridge is obsolete. What exactly is meant by this term? Specifically, the transportation engineers in charge of the project are arguing that it is obsolete because it needs to be able to carry more traffic. Importantly, they have repeatedly stated that the Bridge, while still needing routine maintenance, is structurally sound.
Longtime readers of Strong Towns will immediately recognize the problems with this argument. Those readers with an understanding of induced demand should suspect that widening the I-71/75 Corridor over the Ohio River will result in continued congestion on the interstate, but at a higher volume of cars and trucks occupying a higher number of travel lanes. The problem of traffic congestion has never been solved by increasing capacity, and increasing the capacity of the Brent Spence Bridge will be no different.
Interestingly, despite many years of regional officials complaining about the bridge accompanied by predictions of doom and gloom, the traffic has never actually gotten worse. Predictions of continually worsening traffic volumes made by regional traffic engineers have never come to fruition—a pattern of prediction error that Strong Towns has repeatedly documented.
Wildly inaccurate Brent Spence Bridge Traffic projections. (Source: Brad Thomas / @BradleyWThomas.)
The Brent Spence Bridge was recently named the number two traffic bottleneck in country. Perhaps we can learn an important lesson from a past holder of that title: the Katy Freeway in Houston, Texas. In 2004, the American Highway Users Alliance named the Katy Freeway the second worst bottleneck in the nation. In response, the state of Texas pumped over $2 billion into widening the freeway, resulting in a total of 23 travel lanes, turning the Katy into the widest freeway in the world. What was the end result? Congestion became worse, and commute times ended up increasing by 25 minutes (30% over baseline), according to a 2015 analysis by City Observatory.
Let us now consider another possible outcome: What if they build the new bridge, but nobody comes? This was the situation in Louisville, which was analyzed by Aaron Renn of the Manhattan Institute in 2019. Renn compared the Brent Spence Bridge Corridor project to the I-65 Kennedy Bridge companion project in Louisville. In order to secure funding, Indiana and Kentucky agreed to toll the river crossing to generate the necessary revenue. The end result was a traffic redistribution throughout the highway system, as drivers shifted their behavior in order to avoid the tolls. The important point to note is that traffic on the previously congested I-65 bridge fell by half, while the number of lanes increased to twelve. Whereas the bridge was carrying 126,000 vehicles per day before the project, upon completion, traffic fell to 64,000 vehicles per day in 2018. As Renn summarizes, “the two states spent $1.3 billion on a new bridge to double capacity of a road whose traffic then fell by half… If Cincinnati uses tolls to expand the Brent Spence Bridge, which would be inevitable given the price tag of the project, there’s no reason not to expect the same thing to happen.”
This claim is staggering, and Cincinnati city leaders need to pay attention in order to avoid cooperating with a multi-billion dollar mistake. It borders on municipal governance malpractice for the leaders of a city that recently celebrated a paltry $1 million investment in pedestrian safety, to turn around and support a multi-billion project that will only serve to bring more automobile-dependent commuters into the city. Based on past experience in the region and across the country, it is not unreasonable to assume that this project will harm urban Cincinnati land values, frustrate attempts to repopulate the city center, promote further job dispersion and residential sprawl into Northern Kentucky, worsen automobile traffic in the city, exacerbate pedestrian safety issues, misallocate infrastructure investment that could be better used for improving public transit, and worsen regional air quality, along with other environmental harms. If that’s not enough to dissuade you, the project may not even be necessary, as Renn’s prior analysis suggests.
A cost-free alternative to this project is possible, however. Municipal officials in the City of Cincinnati should advocate that the Brent Spence Bridge be tolled before pursuing any attempt at widening this interstate. The resulting funds should then be put to use improving public transit quality and efficiency, and improving bicycle and pedestrian safety initiatives. An important use of these funds could include expanding streetcar service north to the University of Cincinnati and across the river into Newport-Covington. City and regional officials should evaluate the post-toll traffic situation before committing billions of dollars to a project of dubious value.
Mayor Pureval is clearly an ambitious young leader. He should learn from the example of Harris County, Texas, Judge Lina Hidalgo, and work to oppose this project until more sensible alternatives are explored. Cincinnati has the potential to be a great Strong Town, but the process needs to start with Doing the Math on the Brent Spence Bridge Corridor Project.