Expand Transit, Not Highways: Action Alert
Expanding the Brent Spence Corridor is a
bad deal for Greater Cincinnati
16+ lanes wide • $3.6+ billion wasted • 8+ years of construction • 29+ bulldozed homes & businesses • 90+ acres of forest destroyed • Worse traffic
ODOT is barreling forward with the 7.8 mile Brent Spence Corridor expansion using an outdated environmental assessment that was prepared over 12 years ago. We need your help to submit as many comments as possible by March 8, 2024 into the record challenging ODOT’s proposed $3.6+ billion Brent Spence Bridge Corridor Freeway Expansion.
The form below will send your comments directly to ODOT & KYTC – below the submission form we also have more information on our official position on the proposed expansion (in short: 1. Investigate Congestion Pricing 2. Expand Transit, Not Highways! 3. Reconnect the West End 4. More Lanes = More Congestion 5. Stop Repeating the Harms of the Past 6. More Construction and Cars = More Pollution).
Please submit your own comment in the form above by March 8, 2024. You can write whatever you’d like, but we’d encourage you to speak from the heart and write about your own personal reasons why you oppose this project, be it related to air pollution, induced demand, climate change, or general skepticism of ODOT & KYTC. Overall, these are the points that we wish to stress, and would appreciate you echoing in your own comments.
ODOT should investigate congestion pricing in a no-build scenario in their consideration of alternatives to this project. While Kentucky state law prohibits the use of tolling to finance an expansion project of this type (“a development agreement or financial plan”), no regulation exists which would prohibit the use of tolling for congestion relief in a no-build scenario. Use of tolling as a financing mechanism was used in a similar project in Louisville, and the presence of tolling resulted in a significant decrease in traffic across a previously un-tolled river crossing. Evidence in the field of urban planning, including direct experience in the state of Kentucky, supports the use of congestion pricing or tolling as a “reasonable alternative” to highway widening for congestion relief, and no consideration of this alternative has been made in the development of the BSCP. The Federal Highway Administration Office of Operations promotes congestion pricing as a “way of harnessing the power of the market to reduce the waste associated with traffic congestion.”
ODOT should consider any alternative that involves transit expansion, that would allow a smaller highway improvement/expansion project. With regard to the DOT claims of great need for greater truck traffic capacity, they rely on an outdated 2004 study/report. The actual traffic counts, indicate that traffic counts overall, have not been increasing as repeatedly projected by ODOT or KYTC.
We believe ODOT should investigate, through formal technical feasibility studies, narrowing the right of way and reconnecting city streets to reduce impact of the interstate highway through the West End neighborhood. This would facilitate the long-term rehabilitation of this community and bring the project in alignment with stated USDOT objectives of reconnecting communities that have been adversely impacted by prior infrastructure projects.
More congestion can’t be solved with the current plan. There’s a fundamental flaw in the design of the region’s traffic network: all the traffic is funneled into one major route. As the ODOT Brent Spence project manager acknowledged years ago, "We could continue to build lanes on 75, but they would fill because of the nature of the traffic network in the region." In other words, this region cannot build its way out of the traffic congestion issues without fundamental changes in the design of the overall network or by investing in other modes such as bus, light-rail, and better biking/walking infrastructure.
ODOT reduced the number of homes that will be demolished but in doing so they are subjecting the remaining residents to a lifetime of increased air pollution. The freeway expansion project will further damage and harm the minority residents (primarily Black and Hispanic) who live in higher concentration in the immediate area of the project in both Cincinnati, Ohio and Covington and Park Hills, KY.
ODOT needs to consider the Green House Gas emissions from construction, a massive amount during the years of construction, which will continue adding to the planet's heating every year for perhaps the next century, and undercounting of ongoing GHG emissions due to inadequate treatment of induced traffic
