President Joe Biden visited Covington, Kentucky, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, to promote his infrastructure policies that will fund the renovation of a local bridge over which materials accounting for 3% of US GDP travels each year, WLWT NBC 5 in Cincinnati reports.
Opened in 1963, the Brent Spence Bridge has been in serious need of repair for more than two decades. Originally designed to carry a three-lane roadway on each of two levels, the layout of the bridge has been altered to eliminate emergency lanes to expand to eight total lanes to increase capacity. The bridge has been repeatedly closed as chunks of concrete have dislodged from the top roadway, crashing onto the lower level.
Officials have tried for decades to develop a plan to renovate and update the structure, but with no success. The Biden Administration included $1.6 billion for the vital span in his landmark $550 billion infrastructure bill, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed by Congress in November 2021.