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Department of Highways, the project will
include constructing five primary interchanges.
The reason for the wide variance in projected project cost - between $2 billion and $3 billion - is that five design
alternatives are still being studied.
"I-75/I-71 is the major north-south interstate trucking route from Canada to Florida," said Hans. "And I-74 also
intersects at this juncture where the Brent Spence Bridge is, here at the Ohio River between Cincinnati, Ohio and Covington,
Kentucky. We have over 160,000 vehicles per day now crossing. By the year 2030, if nothing is done, we estimate there will
be more than 200,000 vehicles per day," he added.
How are the two states sharing the funding on this massive bi-state project? Did they get any dollars from the latest
six-year federal transportation bill?
Ohio and Kentucky are bearing the cost according to a formula, said Stefan Spinosa, project manager with the Ohio
Department of Transportation.
"Basically the states are splitting the local match based on the number of lane miles of interstate within the study
area," Spinosa said. "Ohio is funding 54.5 percent and Kentucky is funding 45.5 percent. Ohio's got a lot more roadway
system, even though Kentucky actually owns the river crossing."
The Brent Spence Bridge Project did receive dollars from SAFETEA-LU, the six-year federal transportation bill President
Bush signed into law in August 2005, but not mega-project dollars like the $239 million the new Mississippi River Bridge
Project received.
"In the latest T bill, SAFETEA-LU, $35.6 million went to Kentucky and $10 million went to Ohio," said Spinosa. "Ohio had
previously committed enough money to get us through preliminary engineering, so the $10 million just replaced some of the
money we'd already committed."
Hans said Kentucky had also received $3.8 million from a previous federal transportation appropriation. "Our state
matches with toll credits," he said. "Right now, there is no state funding in these early phases, but there will be in the
construction phases."
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration, a section of the federal
transportation reauthorization bill allows states to substitute certain previous toll-financed investments in lieu of state
matching funds on current federally funded projects through the use of a "soft match" with units known as toll credits.
With respect to a timeline, Hans said the two states are nearing the public involvement phase and hope to have a design
chosen from the five alternatives by late 2008 or early 2009. Under this schedule, right-of-way acquisition would take place
in 2012 and 2013 and construction would begin in 2015.
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Hans and Spinosa said the two states' political leadership - on both a state and national level - take seriously the Memo
of Agreement dictating the split of matching dollars and are already laying out a strategy of how to campaign for dollars
from the next six-year federal transportation authorization bill in 2011.
"Ohio and Kentucky agree that this is a project of regional and national significance," said Hans. "We're already
beginning to look at how we can get in on the next six-year T bill in 2011. The timing would be ideal for us."
Are the states concerned about each state holding up its end of the promise to fund its percentage of the project?
Hans said in addition to the Memorandum of Agreement, the document that spells out in detail the funding commitment,
there is somewhat of a safeguard inherent in the due diligence required by the Environmental Protection Agency through the
documentation it requires states to file when tackling projects like this one.
"It is a large amount of dollars that will come out of the state's federal funding match," Hans said. "And no matter what
project it is, or what level of significance it has, you will have people from other parts of the state saying, 'Hey, that's
a lot of money that's not going to our area.' That's where the financial plan that NEPA requires us to file comes into play.
It's just another specific, binding document that outlines specifically the details of the work we're committing to do and
how we're going to make it happen."
Hans begs to differ with states who don't regard MOAs as binding documents.
"FHWA doesn't want the state DOTs to expend millions of dollars in design and not have a plan in place to pay for the
project, and then put those plans away on a shelf," he said. "Technically we see those Memos of Agreement as legally
binding. We (Kentucky and Ohio) are taking them seriously. By their very nature, they're hard to change."
Each state is performing its own design work, the project engineers said, up to the state line.
In terms of estimated construction costs, Spinosa said Ohio's portion of the project will run anywhere from $257 million
to $556 million, depending upon which of the five design alternatives is selected; each has different alignments and lane
configurations. Also included would be estimated design costs of up to $253 million, real estate and relocation costs
estimated at up to $23 million and development costs of up to $177 million, plus an assumed inflation rate of 82 percent for
the life of the project which translates to roughly $456 million.
Kentucky's portion of the construction costs, Hans said, are estimated to range from $626 million to $849 million, again
depending upon which specific design is chosen. Also included in the project's overall cost estimates would be design cots
of up to $386 million, relocation and real estate costs estimated at up to $26 million and development costs of up to $148
million, plus an assumed inflation rate of 82 percent or $696 million.
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