Covington Mayor Joe Meyer talked to the Covington Optimist Club at PeeWee’s Place in Crescent Springs Wednesday, where he answered questions about the Brent Spence Bridge.
The event was titled “Why Covington mayor did a U-turn on the new Ohio River bridge? Please join us as Joe tells all.” The title of the event was in reference to an Enquirer article titled “From ‘existential threat’ to ‘huge win’: Covington mayor does U-turn on new bridge” where Meyer was accused of changing his mind on the bridge. But, he said that headline didn’t match what was in the article, which said he called the bridge an ‘existential threat,’ or his feelings on bridge tolls, and it didn’t reflect the nuance of the situation.
“I have been fighting for many, many years against tolls on the Brent Spence Bridge,” Meyer said.
Before he was Covington’s mayor, Meyer expressed his disdain for the bridge tolls when he was involved with Northern Kentucky United, a group that vowed to fight toll proponents.
“The economic impact of tolls on Northern Kentucky will be devastating to our hardworking families and small businesses,” Meyer said in 2014 in the coalition’s announcement. “We’ll be paying as much as half a billion dollars in direct and indirect costs to the region. That’s not an acceptable price to pay for a project that should be funded by the federal government.”
Meyer said he’s been fighting bridge proponents in both Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati who advocated the use of tolls to finance the project. He’s also been working with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet on concerns for the project.
“We’ve been negotiating with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, and I gave them six pages of demands,” Meyer said, elaborating that the document includes 20-pages of detail that show the impact to the city on the project.
The bridge is expected to take over seven years to complete, but Meyer said that KYTC could possibly get that down to around five years. This would impact Covington businesses, according to Meyer, as construction will cause issues.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear and Ohio Governor Mike DeWine recently announced they have jointly submitted an application requesting nearly $2 billion in federal funding to improve the Brent Spence Bridge Corridor that runs through Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati.
“Ohio and Kentucky are working together to seize this once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve the quality of life for the millions of Americans who use the federal highway system to travel between our two states,” Beshear said in an announcement.
The Kentucky legislature approved $250 million in support of the grant while also approving $1.3 billion in funds for the project in the state’s biennial budget. This is in addition to the $2 billion hoped to come from the federal infrastructure bill. The total cost of the project is expected to be $2.8 billion.
“The total cost of this is $2.8 billion, and Kentucky provides $1.3 billion of this,” said Transportation Committee Chair Rep. Sal Santoro (R-Union) during a committee meeting during the 2022 legislative session. “This is over a few years. We are working with Ohio.”
