AASHTO Journal, 16 October 2015
Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear said Oct. 9 that the state has awarded a construction contract to complete the widening of Interstate 65 – one of his administration’s highest transportation priorities.
“When this final project has been completed, I-65 will be six lanes wide from the Ohio River to the Tennessee border,” Beshear said. “Because of the importance of I-65 as a commercial and travel corridor, its widening will rank as one of the most significant investments ever made in the interest of business, efficiency and highway safety.”
Scotty’s Contracting and Stone of Glasgow, Ky., submitted the low bid of $68.6 million, which was about $11 million below the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s own estimate.
The 10- mile project will widen the highway from Sonora to the Western Kentucky Parkway interchange at Elizabethtown, with completion by November 2018.
I-65 in Kentucky is 137.3 miles long, extending from the Ohio River at Louisville to the Tennessee border near Franklin in Simpson County. Along the way, it threads through or near Shepherdsville, Elizabethtown and Bowling Green.
“It is one of the nation’s premier freight corridors, with a heavy volume of commercial vehicle traffic,” the governor’s announcement said.
That route has also frequently seen heavy congestion with correspondingly high crash rates, so the Beshear administration said completing the widening will cap its efforts to make I-65 safer.
Beginning in 2008, the Transportation Cabinet deployed about 45 miles of median cable barriers and temporary concrete barriers along parts of I-65 to prevent “crossover” crashes, as interim steps until the roadway could be widened and fitted with permanent barriers.
Beshear also listed other actions his administration has taken to improve Kentucky’s transportation infrastructure, including:
–Launching the Louisville-Southern Indiana Ohio River Bridges Project, which will double capacity across the river on I-65 in downtown Louisville and use a second new bridge to complete an expressway loop around the greater Louisville region.
–Building new four-lane bridges to carry U.S. 68/KY 80 over Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley, and replace a pair of aging two-lane spans too narrow for modern traffic. A new Kentucky Lake bridge is nearing completion, while a new Lake Barkley bridge will be open to traffic by October 2017.
–Widening U.S. 68/KY 80 to complete a four-lane, 65-mph corridor from Mayfield to Bowling Green. The KYTC will take bids in November on contracts to complete the last remaining two-lane section of Cadiz to Lake Barkley in Trigg County.
–Rapid repair of the Eggners Ferry Bridge on Kentucky Lake when a cargo ship drifted off course and struck the bridge in January 2012, destroying a 320-foot section. The bridge was repaired and reopened in just 121 days, shortly before Memorial Day and the beginning of the area’s important summer tourism season.