Gov. Mike DeWine is joining President Biden in Covington, Kentucky Wednesday afternoon to talk about a huge check coming for the repair and replacement of the Brent Spence Bridge in Cincinnati. The federal money for the five-year project is nearly half of the $3.6 billion it’s expected to cost.
200,000 vehicles travel the bridge every day. It was built in 1963 to handle 80,000. It’s now considered "functionally obsolete".
The Republican DeWine said he and Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear asked for federal money to build a new bridge and make improvements on the existing one.
“We both have figured out how we're going to come up with our money. But the missing piece, candidly, was there was simply not enough money there," said DeWine.
"We felt once the federal infrastructure bill was passed that we were a prime, prime candidate for a lot of this money because this is a bridge of national significance."
The project got $1.6 billion, one of the largest infrastructure investments in history.
Republicans largely opposed the infrastructure bill championed by the Democratic president in 2021. But at the event will be former US Sen. Rob Portman, who was one of 19 Republican Senators to vote for the infrastructure bill. The only Republican of the then-16 member Ohio Congressional delegation Republican in the House to do so was former Congressman Anthony Gonzalez.
DeWine said it will take at least five years to build a new bridge, which he suggested will have a new name that’s easier to say.
