The Daniel Carter Beard Bridge is expected to reopen in March after crews repair damage caused by an intense fire, but for those whose daily lives are affected by the closure, several more months feels like too long of a wait.
Jill Dunne of Fort Thomas is senior director of marketing and communications at ArtWorks, a nonprofit in Walnut Hills, and is among the 100,000 drivers whose daily commutes have been disrupted by the bridge closure.
“I felt like I’ve always been lucky, I appreciate the convenience of Downtown,” she said. But she hasn’t had that much luck since the bridge closed after a Nov. 1 fire significantly damaged the southbound lanes of Interstate 471.
Dunne especially remembers November 6, when she went home from work around 5:30 p.m. She took Columbia Parkway to Sixth Street Downtown. It rained and it became dark.
A man walks near the Daniel Carter Beard Bridge construction site Wednesday, November 27, 2024. Several lanes of Interstate 471 have been closed since a fire broke out under the bridge on Nov. 1. Since then, Ohio Department of Transportation crews have installed new support towers and repaired portions of the deck most damaged by the fire.
“It was just bumper to bumper.” She was about to turn right onto Broadway to get to the Taylor-Southgate Bridge leading to Newport when traffic stopped.
‘I remember the light kept changing from red to green. It was a stalemate.’ Getting home took about four times as long as normal, Dunne said. Now she even avoids going to Downtown events after work.
Dunne says she’s lucky: ArtWorks has flexible hours, so she works in the office in the morning and drives home before traffic hits hard. She has also tried to find creative solutions for the journey, seeing other people’s posts on social media sharing their ideas.
Dunne said she believes the Ohio Department of Transportation is doing its best to schedule the work that needs to be done. But on Wednesday she heard on her way to work that the bridge will probably reopen in March. That seems like an eternity, she said.
‘A bit much’
Bill Childers, quality control supervisor at Ray St. Clair Roofing, said the daily backups on I-471 make the job more difficult.
As the Fairfield-based company gets jobs around the I-275 loop, including Kentucky, he says the longer river commutes are starting to impact the company’s ability to be as efficient.
“Between (the materials) and the crew, you have to make ends meet somehow,” Childers said.
Kathy Poe, of Covington’s Latonia neighborhood, doesn’t cross the river for work, but her three siblings live in Northern Kentucky and all work on the Ohio side.
Her brother is a truck driver and is used to being stuck on the road, she said, “but when 20 minutes turns into an hour and 20 minutes, that’s a bit much.”
Like many Northern Kentucky residents, she looks forward to the day when the $3.6 billion Brent Spence Bridge Corridor project will provide traffic relief with an accompanying Ohio River bridge. But it won’t be completed until 2030.
“They say they have the money,” Poe said. “Why don’t they continue with that?”
‘I didn’t want to come back’
The Montgomery Inn restaurant on the eastern edge of Sawyer Point was among the businesses affected by the bridge fire.
The two-week closure of Riverside Drive “was devastating for us,” said Managing Partner Dean Gregory. “We lost 200 reservations the first night.”
Business picked up when officials reopened the street that runs past the restaurant. “People who did come here didn’t want to come back until the road was open,” Gregory said.
He added that the upcoming holidays should help bring in more customers. The famous ribs eatery is closed on Thanksgiving, but has many reservations for the weekend and will resume lunch service on December 6 – on hiatus since the COVID-19 pandemic.
How long will repairs take?
During a news conference Wednesday, ODOT officials said the bridge is expected to reopen in early March. However, that all depends on how long it takes for custom components to arrive in Cincinnati and the severity of the winter weather.
Crews will begin demolishing the damaged portions of the bridge on Friday. The work is expected to be completed by mid-December. Construction will then begin in January, officials said.
Why do repairs take longer than Brent Spence?
By comparison, the last closure of the Brent Spence Bridge lasted 41 days. It closed on November 11, 2020, after a semi-truck crashed into a truck that stabbed the Brent Spence, causing a fire.
Neither operator was injured, but the bridge required new steel support beams and new concrete sections on both decks.
The bridge reopened on Dec. 22, 2020, with work completed for less than half of the $12 million secured in emergency federal funding, according to Michael Baker International, the Pittsburgh-based technical consultant on site.
Vehicles slowly make their way over the Taylor-Southgate Bridge towards Newport on Wednesday, November 27, 2024, while the Daniel Carter Beard Bridge in the foreground is closed northbound. On November 1, a fire broke out under the bridge, closing the lanes.
Matt Bruning, a spokesman for ODOT, said the damage to the Brent Spence is not comparable to that caused by the recent fire under I-471.
Unlike the Brent Spence, the structural stability of the Big Mac Bridge was compromised by the fire, making it unsafe for anyone to be on or under the bridge to conduct inspections or begin repairs until it was stabilized.
The bridge was so badly damaged that officials initially worried it would collapse, but those concerns have since subsided.
Also unlike the Brent Spence, officials said they are also relying on custom materials to repair the Big Mac Bridge.
“We understand that this has been a major inconvenience and frustration for many people,” Bruning said.
Which roads experience the greatest traffic impact?
Two weeks after the closure of the Big Mac Bridge, the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Government released data showing that the region’s other Ohio River bridges are experiencing heavier traffic flows as a result.
Vehicles slowly make their way north on the Taylor-Southgate Bridge toward Newport on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. Traffic along the Taylor-Southgate Bridge and other bridges in the Cincinnati area has increased since a fire broke out under the Daniel Carter Beard Bridge. 1 Closure of the northbound lanes.
On Wednesday, Kathleen Fuller, spokesperson for ODOT District 8, said the Taylor-Southgate Bridge connecting Newport and Cincinnati has picked up much of the diverted traffic, while the Clay Wade Bailey Bridge is underutilized.
Signal timing at five intersections in Newport has been adjusted to help improve traffic flow, according to the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. Traffic signals at three intersections on Third Street – those at Monmouth Street, Washington Avenue and Saratoga Street and traffic signals at two intersections at Dave Cowens Drive at Washington and Park Avenue have also had their signal timing adjusted.
Melissa McVay, a supervisory management analyst with Cincinnati’s Department of Transportation and Engineering, previously told The Enquirer that the city is working to simplify backups in Downtown. The department has adjusted signal timing to improve traffic flow and is evaluating further changes, she said.
Why hasn’t anyone said what caused the fire?
The cause of the fire remains under investigation by the Cincinnati Fire Department’s Fire Investigative Unit, spokesperson Lindsay Lomax Haegele said Tuesday. She could not say how long that would take. But she did respond to a recurring theory about the origins of the fire.
“Many have speculated that the fire came from a person or people experiencing homelessness, but this speculation cannot be confirmed or denied at this time,” she said in a prepared statement. “Sharing information too quickly can compromise the integrity of the investigation by jeopardizing the safety of witnesses, alerting potential suspects and revealing crucial strategies.”
After a fire broke out in a playground on Cincinnati’s riverfront just below the bridge, the flames reached more than 40 feet and were so high that some witnesses thought a vehicle was on fire in the roadway. Even after the main fire was extinguished, the flames were still flaring up after seven hours.
What is being done about flammable material under bridges?
Partly in response to federal memos asking states to address the storage of flammable materials under bridges, officials in recent years have done just that, Bruning said.
Those efforts resulted in crews removing flammable items from bridges in Cincinnati, including U.S. Route 50 and the Brent Spence, he said, adding that a public records search revealed no concerns about the playground equipment and mulch under the Daniel Carter Beard Bridge. .
“What exactly burned and how did it burn, it will be very interesting for us to be able to answer that question,” Bruning said.
This article originally appeared on the Cincinnati Enquirer: After an update on Big Mac Bridge repairs, some say the wait is too long
