John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge

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John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge
The John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge in 2006 as seen from Louisville Waterfront Park
Carries	7 lanes of Interstate 65
Crosses	Ohio River
Locale	Louisville, Kentucky and Jeffersonville, Indiana
Design	Cantilever bridge
Longest span	700 feet x 2 spans
Total length	2,498 feet
Opening date	December 6, 1963
Coordinates	38°15′52″N, 85°44′37″W

The John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge is a seven-lane, single-deck cantilever bridge that carries Interstate 65 across the Ohio River, connecting Louisville, Kentucky and Jeffersonville, Indiana. The main span is 700 feet (two spans) and the bridge has a total length of 2498 feet. There are four lanes that go northbound and three lanes that carry southbound traffic across the bridge.

Designed by the Louisville engineering firm of Hazelet & Erdal, construction began in the spring of 1961 and was completed in late 1963 at a cost of $10 million. The span had yet to be named when U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. Four days later, Kentucky Governor Bert T. Combs announced that there was wide agreement that the bridge would be named in Kennedy's honor. The bridge was dedicated and opened for northbound traffic on December 6, and southbound traffic began flowing a few weeks later.

Between the late 1990s and 2006, the bridge was covered with rust-like spots for years and the state of Kentucky had failed in attempts to rectify this, a subject of local controversy. The state had twice had contractors paid to repaint the bridge fail to do so. The attempts cost over $23 million, with little apparent result. The first of the two contracts, awarded in 1999, ended two years later in a bribery scandal that resulted in criminal prosecution. ^[1]

In October 2006, the state awarded a $14.7 million contract to a Lexington company to paint half the bridge by Summer 2007.^[2]

1 Second span
2 References
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Second span

Plans are in the works to build a new span immediately upstream from the Kennedy Bridge as part of the Ohio River Bridges Project, a project to relieve traffic congestion in the Louisville area. The new bridge will provide six lanes for northbound I-65, while the Kennedy Bridge will be converted to carry six lanes of southbound traffic.