Cincinnati Bridge Battle Highlights Historic Highway Harms

Brent Spence Bridge from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Covington, Kentucky. (Source: Wikimedia Commons/Chris Light.)

At a high-profile media event in January, President Biden joined elected officials from two states and both parties to extoll an infrastructure project. With a boost of $1.4 billion in federal funding, the Brent Spence Bridge Corridor project will expand connections between the city of Cincinnati and the state of Kentucky. Biden praised its intended effects to reduce trucking delays at a  bottleneck where two major highways meet. He later mentioned the project in his State of the Union address.

It was touted as a rare show of bipartisanship, with a narrative centered on political cooperation, construction jobs, and vaunted traffic reductions. A similar event may have played out at a project site near you. But according to some Cincinnati advocates, this feel-good story ignores vital context and facts on the ground. 

“The West End neighborhoods of Cincinnati were devastated first by urban renewal starting in the 1930s, and then continuing on in the 1950s with the wholesale destruction of their neighborhoods with the construction of the I-75 corridor,” says Matt Butler, president of the Devou Good Foundation, which is spearheading local opposition to the project. Butler notes that the original highway project leveled “tens of thousands of homes and churches and places of business” in historically black neighborhoods, and the adverse health and environmental effects of those actions continue today. 

A group called the Greater Cincinnati Council for Transit and Sustainable Development is using that history as a basis for a unique challenge to the Brent Spence Bridge expansion. In a letter to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the signatories argue that the project should be denied approval because of existing federal environmental justice and civil rights rules that protect the surrounding neighborhoods.

Their arguments are based on environmental justice provisions in the National Environmental Policy Act; Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act; and specific rules for the U.S. and Ohio Departments of Transportation. 

In the letter, written and signed by Dr. Ryan Crane (who has written about this project for Strong Towns), Matt Butler, and several other local leaders representing local businesses, clergy, and non-profit organizations, the complainants petitioned the FHWA to “not provide an environmental approval for this project until the civil rights and environmental justice issues presented herein are properly analyzed, addressed, and resolved.” 

Quoting from a 1994 presidential memorandum, the letter notes that “each Federal agency will identify and address, as appropriate, any disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of its programs, policies and activities on minority populations and low-income populations.” It says that the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) application for federal funding “shows that the entire project impact area in the state of Ohio is made up of areas designated as Areas of Persistent Poverty, Historically Disadvantaged Communities, or both.”

The complainants then argue, “where prior discriminatory practice or usage has tended to subject individuals to discrimination under any program or activity to which Title VI applies, the applicant or recipient, in this case ODOT, ‘must take affirmative action to remove or overcome the effects of the prior discriminatory practice or usage.’”

In an ironic twist, an important part of their argument comes directly from the Biden Administration. A 2021 executive order issued by President Biden stipulated, “The creation of the Interstate Highway System, funded and constructed by the Federal Government and State governments in the 20th century, disproportionately burdened many historically Black and low-income neighborhoods in many American cities.” Seeing the words of the sitting president, Crane reasoned, “this is an accepted argument at this point.”

The complaint letter includes several citations from that memo, connecting the threads that there was a historical injustice, that the proposed project represents a continuation of that injustice, and that the government’s own guidelines call for redress in those situations.

The environmental harm caused to Cincinnati residents by the I-75 corridor is well documented. A Children’s Hospital of Cincinnati Medical Center study tracked about 750 residents from infancy to teenager, and found “a number of health issues to air pollution generated by the interstate, especially tied to diesel exhaust, including ADHD and asthma,” says Butler. 

Studies have also shown that prevailing weather patterns exacerbate the adverse health effects. “The way the wind patterns work, it essentially blows the particulates and pollution to the north and east, which is exactly where the West End is relative to the project impact area,” says Crane. Air quality sensors installed throughout the adjacent neighborhoods have shown greater concentration of pollution closer to the interstate. 

The specifics of the Brent Spence Corridor Project call for a $3.6 billion renovation of the existing bridge, plus a new companion bridge to accommodate interstate traffic. It would also overhaul and expand the approaches on both sides of the bridge. 

This aspect is particularly troublesome to opponents of the project. “They want to double the amount of pavement in about a six-mile stretch for just this one project,” says Butler, in some cases expanding from eight to 16 lanes. This would effectively double down on the historic harm of the original highway decisions. 

It also reflects the mentality of maximum throughput of automobiles to and from urban cores, with little attention to the neighborhoods those roads pass through. In greater Cincinnati, a coalition of local governments works on transportation issues together, but with no priority given for population, suburban jurisdictions can effectively outvote the city. 

Both Butler and Crane credit attorney Dennis Grezinski with helping direct and focus their arguments. Grezinski has fought other highway expansion projects, including the I-94 project in Milwaukee, and he identified that opponents were using similar arguments to fight I-45 in Houston and the Rose Quarter project in Oregon. 

The letter (which you can read here) has already cleared its first hurdle. The FHWA informed the complainants that an official investigation has been assigned to an analyst in the agency’s Office of Civil Rights.

The coalition favors a no-build option, and argues that congestion pricing could address the current traffic crunch. Butler says this has been effective in other cities, using financial incentives to make drivers shift their usage from peak traffic periods. The letter claims local transportation agencies failed to consider this option, “Neither ODOT nor OKI discuss the use of tolling or congestion pricing in a no-build scenario in their consideration of alternatives to this project.” Butler would also like to see light rail capabilities included in any bridge expansion project.

Another opposition group called Bridge Forward has proposed an alternative that would reclaim 30 acres of space currently covered with I-75 lanes, exchanges, and ramps. This would allow redevelopment that benefits the neighborhood and the local economy. Its website has compelling visuals that document the disappearing West End neighborhood as highway expansion cleaved it. 

Writing for Lyft, Stephanie Gidigbi Jenkins has a fascinating history of how this issue has played out in American history. Referring to the slew of projects that will stem from the latest federal infrastructure law, Jenkins argues that  “It would be a tragedy if a multibillion-dollar investment in public infrastructure only makes America more unequal and segregated.”

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