The mostly local debate over how to pay for the $2.6 billion Brent Spence Bridge Corridor project, or whether to do the project at all, was aired statewide in an hour-long edition of Kentucky Tonight on KET Monday.
No new ground was covered for local viewers and it is likely that neither side changed anyone’s mind.
Covington Mayor Sherry Carran and C-Forward president Brent Cooper, in his last task as interim president of the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, represented the argument for moving forward with the bridge project, even if that means financing it through the use of a toll.
Covington City Commissioner Steve Frank and attorney Brian Ellerman, general counsel for Toebben Companies, argued against moving forward on the bridge until the federal government pays for it in full.
“It’s nice to have a bridge, it’s not essential if it means bankrupting the biggest town in the region,” Frank said.
“Wow,” Cooper responded, frustrated that the message from the region is still not unified in that there is need for the bridge, regardless of the payment plan. Frank contends that Covington would be doomed if the bridge project includes tolls because of the diversion traffic that he predicts would flood the city.
Carran also decried the lack of a regional message on the project’s necessity. “In my perspective, the bridge connects us regionally and I believe that’s an area where our city has not done a good job,” Carran said. “People consider us parochial, more inward and one of the things I’ve focused on as mayor is to think bigger picture.”
Ellerman argued that the main purpose for the bridge project is to benefit Cincinnati with Northern Kentucky footing the bill. “This design is not about the traffic we have, it’s the traffic Cincinnati wants to have,” he said. “It’s more related to Cincinnati’s long-term goals to redevelop its West End. That is a very good idea. It’s going to work well for them but they are basically making this all about redeveloping that corridor on the backs of Northern Kentuckians because all the benefit will be on the Cincinnati side an the hardship will be on the Northern Kentucky side.”
Both sides accuse the other of using scare tactics. Frank said that the existing span still has 50 years of life yet and is integral to the design of any new bridge. He said bridge project supporters allow a misconception that the bridge is dangerous.
“The bridge itself is structurally safe, but the traffic functionally is not safe,” Carran said. She said Covington’s emergency responders go four to seven times a week to issues on the bridge. “When they go, you don’t just have one vehicle. They have to have what they call buffer vehicles. When somebody stops on that bridge there are no safety lanes. It is functionally unsafe.”
Cooper said Northern Kentuckians are already paying a toll in the form of time spent in traffic and gas exhausted. He also cited potential local projects in Covington left in limbo while the bridge project is stalled. Properties in Lewisburg, many of which, according to Carran, were purchased by “slum lords” hoping to score money from the state when the bridge project claimed them, sit vacant. The Bavarian Brewery building, which previously housed Jillian’s, will sit idle as long as the bridge project does, Cooper said. Additionally, riverfront developments could take a hit. “Hotels are not worried about tolling,” Cooper said. “They’re worried about how long construction is going to take.”
Meanwhile, Carran accused Frank of using a scare tactic in his characterization of the project’s impact on access to Devou Park and Park Hills. “In the current plan, access to Lewisburg into Park Hills and Dixie Highway, it’s not cut off. It’s the main street, Lewis Street that is cut off. There are other ways to get around it,” Carran said. “That is a scare tactic Frank wrote in a newsletter scaring people in Park Hills. It was not in the plan and I can show it to you.”
Carran also took a shot at Frank’s comments that he had been involved in lobbying for money from DC for the bridge project. “He was involved in fly-ins (to DC) for the last seven years and what did that result in? Nothing,” Carran said.
If Monday’s televised discussion is any indication, the bridge project is dead. The federal government has shown no interest in a serious method to pay for the bridge outside of an unlikely plan pitched by Senator Mitch McConnell a couple weeks ago, and local sentiment is strong against tolling.
“Toll is a non-starter,” Frank said. “Constituents would prefer a new bridge, they don’t want to pay a toll to get it. …The correct answer is to wait.” Frank also said Kentucky is not prepared for the public-private partnerships required to institute a tolling component on the bridge.
“Kentucky does not have the financial sophistication to get into public-private partnerships,” Frank said.
“If we do nothing, things are going to be stagnant,” Carran said. “Safety concerns are going to get worse. People who are in limbo as to what they can do with their property because they don’t know what’s happening to the bridge, they’ll be tired. We’ve lost residents in Lewisburg and now we have slum lords owning Lewisburg who thought they would make a bundle. A new bridge, well designed with good connectivity, we will prosper.”
“We need to come together and have healthy, productive dialogue about do we need a bridge, because some say we don’t. What is the best way to proceed and without that discussion, with this anti-toll in-your-face stuff that’s happening, that’s not going to occur and until we have that we’re going to be in limbo.”
Written by Michael Monks, editor & publisher of The River City News
Photo: Kentucky Tonight via KET
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