116 BRENT SPENCE BRIDGE During the first half of the 20th century, construction crews on Lock and Dam No. 36 on the Ohio River and railroad workers from Silver Grove, the C&O Railroad’s company town to the southeast, patronized many of Brent’s businesses, but economic expansion ceased owing to Silver Grove’s emergence. Nonetheless, Brent’s small population increased 20-fold on summer Sunday evenings as motorists stopped to view the Coney Island fireworks display over the Ohio River. Eventually, businesses began to leave Brent when the railroad abandoned Silver Grove in 1981. John Laughead, the last area ferryboat operator, stopped making river crossings in 1978, two years after the CombsHehl Bridge opened and made the automobile the preferred means of access to Coney Island. By a series of annexations between 1982 and 1992, Silver Grove acquired the part of Brent from the south edge of the Mary Ingles Highway north to the Ohio River and several parcels on the south side, including the local fishing lake. The rest of the area south of the highway remains in county jurisdiction. While some small businesses linger, Brent’s existence as an independent entity is now history. “Brent,” KJ, July 2, 1891, 7. A brief history of Brent. “Brent—Fundraiser for the New School House,” KJ, August 13, 1891, 1. “Cold Spring—To Be Connected by Telephone to Brent,” KJ, May 4, 1894, 5. Hubbard, Harlan. Shanty Boat. Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1977. Reis, Jim. “Small Brent Once Boomed, but Lost Out to Silver Grove,” KP, November 29, 1999, 4K. Sayers, John, police chief, Silver Grove, Ky. Interview by Robert M. Venable, June 24, 2004, Silver Grove, Ky. Wright, Kay, city clerk, Silver Grove, Ky. Interview by Robert M. Venable, June 24, 2004, Silver Grove, Ky.
Robert Michael Venable
BRENT SPENCE BRIDGE. The Brent Spence Bridge at Covington opened in 1963 as a vital link in the Interstate Highway System (see Expressways). The bridge, named for longtime congressman Brent Spence, opened with little ceremony on November 25, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy (1961–1963) was buried. Tolls ceased to be charged on the John A. Roebling Bridge in conjunction with the opening of the new structure. Motorcades formed in each direction at the tollbooths of the older bridge and proceeded to break ribbons at 3:30 p.m., signifying the end of the toll requirements, then crossed the bridge and returned to their respective states by way of the new Brent Spence Bridge. Dinners had been scheduled for that evening at three restaurants on the Gourmet Strip, to be followed by dedication ceremonies culminating with a fireworks display. The dinners were rescheduled for the following week with Governor Bert Combs (1959–1963) and Lieutenant Governor Wilson Wyatt in attendance. The fireworks were replaced by a 21-gun salute to the slain president. There was sentiment to rename the local structure for Kennedy, but it was announced that instead, the I-65 bridge nearing completion at Louisville would bear his name.
The Brent Spence Bridge, which serves as the Ohio River crossing for both I-75 and I-71, is a three-span double-deck steel cantilever truss structure. The main span is 830.5 feet long, and each side span is 453 feet. Northbound traffic uses the lower deck, southbound traffic the upper deck. Modjeski & Masters, Engineers, of Harrisburg, Pa., designed the bridge, and Charlie B. White, of Alexandria, was the resident engineer for the Kentucky Department of Highways on the bridge construction project. The superstructure was erected by the American Bridge Division of U.S. Steel Corp. of Pittsburgh. A newspaper report at the time noted that the four coats of paint alone weighed 36 tons. The total expenditure for the structure was approximately $10 million, not including the costly approach spans on both sides of the river. Two workmen were killed during the construction. The bridge has long been a bottleneck in the Interstate System because of its heavy use by local commuter traffic. It was originally designed and built with a 42-foot roadway between the curbs, carry ing three 12-foot lanes in each direction. However, the approaches to the bridge narrowed to two lanes, meaning that traffic bottlenecked at the approaches as vehicles fed from three lanes into two. Northbound, the highway dropped a lane at Fift h St. in Covington, and picked up a lane from Fourth St. Southbound traffic in Ohio had two lanes each from I-75 and from the Fort Washington Way segment of I-71 with a merge to the center lane of the bridge. In an attempt to correct the bottleneck, the Kentucky approaches to the bridge were widened to three lanes in the mid-1980s. The curbs and handrails were replaced with barrier walls, providing adequate roadway width to accommodate four substandard 11-foot lanes in each direction. The northbound lanes were restriped to provide these lanes in 1986. The southbound roadway continued to carry just three lanes until after the completion of the Covington Hill reconstruction project in the early 1990s. As a result of these changes, no emergency lanes remain on the bridge, for use when accidents occur. The Brent Spence Bridge was reportedly designed to carry 80,000 vehicles per day, but it exceeded that traffic volume by 1968, and in 2007 the average traffic count was 156,000 vehicles per day. Trucks constitute roughly 20 percent of this volume. With the heavy increase in traffic on I-71 and I-75, the structure’s reconfiguration to carry 4 substandard-width lanes of traffic in each direction, and the absence of emergency shoulders, concerns about the future use of the structure began to arise in the mid-1990s. In 1998 the Ohio-KentuckyIndiana Regional Council of Governments (OKI) commissioned a Major Investment Study (MIS) for the I-71 corridor, which extended from the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport to Kings Island. One part of the MIS was to explore various strategies for improving congestion on the Brent Spence Bridge and to analyze its fatigue life (useful safe structural life). As part of the analysis, a rudimentary calculation indicated a structural fatigue life of 16 years for the structure.
In 2000 OKI and the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission, the metropolitan planning organization for the Dayton, Ohio, area, formed a partnership to undertake an MIS of the section of the I-75 corridor from northern Kentucky to Piqua, Ohio. This analysis, known as the NorthSouth Transportation Initiative, made several recommendations for replacement or rehabilitation projects along the I-75 corridor. One key recommendation was the replacement or rehabilitation of the Brent Spence Bridge in order to improve capacity, access, and safety along the corridor. Because limited engineering had been performed in both studies, and because the Brent Spence Bridge is located in a very complex urban setting, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) and the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) decided to explore the feasibility of replacing the Brent Spence Bridge. A detailed engineering analysis of the fatigue life was also determined to be necessary. Th is 30-month study, known as the Engineering Feasibility Study (EFS), began in 2003. The results of the study indicated that a replacement or rehabilitation of the Brent Spence Bridge was possible and, more importantly, that the previous fatigue-life calculations were inaccurate. Provided that the structure is properly maintained, the actual fatigue life is infinite. The Brent Spence Bridge is determined to be functionally obsolete, as noted in the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) National Bridge Inventory, but not structurally deficient. Based on the recommendations of the EFS, KYTC and ODOT started planning and development of conceptual alternatives for the Brent Spence Bridge Replacement/Rehabilitation project. This phase of the project began in July 2005 and includes the improvement of I-71–I-75 from the Dixie Highway interchange in Kentucky to the Western Hills Viaduct interchange in Ohio. At the time of this writing, four different alternatives are being evaluated. All of them utilize the existing Brent Spence Bridge in conjunction with the addition of a new river crossing. The two structures will carry a combined total of 12–14 lanes, depending on the alternative selected. The selection of a preferred alternative is anticipated in 2009. The current project schedule indicates that construction on the improved I-71–I-75 corridor, including the Brent Spence Bridge and a new river crossing, could begin in 2015. At an estimated cost of $2.09 to $3.03 billion, this project will be the most costly transportation infrastructure project to occur in the Greater Cincinnati area. Bridge maintenance fi les, Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, District Six, Fort Mitchell, Ky. Feasibility and Constructability Study of the Replacement/Rehabilitation of the Brent Spence Bridge, May 2005, Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, District Six, Fort Mitchell, Ky. “New Bridge Opens; Suspension Freed of Toll,” CE, November 26, 1963, 1. Planning Study Report, Brent Spence Bridge Replacement/Rehabilitation Project, September 2006, Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, District Six, Fort Mitchell, Ky.
Ralph Wolff and Robert Hans