The bridge everyone in freight logistics complains about is finally getting help. Ground broke May 8.
Governors from Ohio and Kentucky put shovels in the dirt on the Brent Spence Bridge Corridor, a $4.05 billion project that builds a new companion span just west of the existing 1963 bridge and rebuilds the interstate around it. A Walsh Kokosing joint venture holds the progressive design-build contract, with AECOM and Jacobs leading design. The companion bridge is slated to open in 2031, with the full corridor done in 2033.
What the Brent Spence corridor project covers
This is more than a bridge. The scope rebuilds roughly 5 miles of I-71/I-75 in Kentucky and about a mile of I-75 in Ohio, redesigns ramps, and restores the emergency shoulders the existing double-decker never had. The current bridge carries more than $1 billion in freight a day across the Ohio River and has been functionally obsolete for years, running well over its design capacity with no margin for a breakdown. Splitting traffic across two spans is the whole point.
How a megaproject this size gets paid for
Funding is a federal and state split: about $1.6 billion in federal grants plus state money from Ohio and Kentucky. Notably, there are no tolls, a political condition that’s shadowed this project for two decades and helped stall earlier attempts. Progressive design-build is the delivery method, which lets the Walsh Kokosing team and the states settle scope and price in stages rather than betting everything on one lump-sum bid up front. On a corridor this complex, that flexibility is worth real money.
The award lands in a busy season for U.S. bridge work. Maryland is carving its Key Bridge reconstruction into four contracts, and crossings like the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel are pulling crews and steel into the same market. Pricing reflects it. The $4.05 billion figure is up sharply from earlier estimates, which the team attributes to labor, materials and construction-services inflation.
For a bridge that’s spent 20 years as a case study in deferred infrastructure, the meaningful number isn’t the budget. It’s the calendar. Steel goes in the ground in 2026, and the region finally has a date.
Sources: Engineering News-Record, Walsh Kokosing Design-Build Team.