An update of the financial plan for the Louisville-Southern Indiana Ohio River Bridges Project has been submitted to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA).
The report is an “interim update” that reflects completion of Kentucky’s financing for its portion of the $2.36 billion bistate project—the Downtown Crossing between Louisville and Jeffersonville, Ind. That financing includes a low-cost FHWA loan of up to $452.2 million through the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act.
FHWA requires the project’s Financial Plan to be updated annually with schedules, cost estimates and expenditure data. The interim update effectively supplements the 2013 Financial Plan Annual Update submitted to FHWA by the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and Indiana Department of Transportation in January.
The annual update covered federal fiscal year 2013, which ended last Sept. 30. It included a dramatically lower estimated cost for the project—$2.36 billion, reduced from $2.6 billion—because of accelerated construction and design innovations. The next scheduled update will cover federal fiscal year 2014.
Kentucky and Indiana jointly are building the project to dramatically improve cross-river mobility between Louisville and southern Indiana. The project, due to be completed in December 2016, has two parts:
* Downtown Crossing: includes construction of a new bridge for northbound I-65, renovation and reconfiguration of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge to carry southbound I-65 and rebuilding of downtown interchanges in Louisville and Jeffersonville, Ind. Kentucky is in charge; and
* East End Crossing: comprises a new bridge and approaches, 8 miles upriver, to connect the Gene Snyder Freeway in Kentucky with the Lee Hamilton Highway in southern Indiana. Indiana is responsible for securing design, financing and construction.
