The media blacked out last Sunday NPP Citizen Bridges meeting, but LEO refused to play along. You can read Meador's summary of the meeting here, with his signature editorializing as well.

Thursday is the big ORBP meeting, your last, best hope to be heard as a citizen on this topic. Come get in your 2c:

Louisville Metro Council has moved swiftly to enact congestion pricing (tolls) on Ohio River Bridges. You've got to love our great city, which has stumbled on a good solution to the bridge congestion problem (tolls), but rather than just implement it and be done, we now also have to build some useless additional bridges, whose capacity will quite possibly never be used. Now that the bridge congestion problem is solved, its a shame we couldn't use the revenue to do something smart, like build a sustainable transit system for our city. 8664 has more on last Thursday's transportation subcommittee meeting.

I believe the next hurdle is the Thursday night metro council meeting, 6pm.

UPDATE #2: Added some pictures from the meeting, click Read More to see them.

UPDATE: A bicycle convoy will leave from Louisville to get safely across the 2nd Street Bridge. Be ready to leave at 10:45am from in front of Bearno's by the Bridge (NE corner of Main and 2nd).

You are invited to the Big 4 Bridge public workshop on Saturday. According to the flyer "this will allow residents to share ideas with the City and design team as well as critique ideas and concepts that are developed through this project. Everyone is encouraged to attend and bring their neighbors and families to participate."

Saturday, June 6, 2009
130 W. Riverside Drive, Jeffersonville - Brad Sprigler Design Studio
11am - 1pm;
formal presentation will begin @ 11:30am
come and go as you like

Its obvious what a big deal the Big 4 bridge will be. But in case you live on the moon or something: Jeffersonville is a lovely town, no farther from my home than, say, St Matthews. However, to get to St Matthews is a simple bike ride. To get to Jefforsonville is a harrowing journey over the Clark Memorial "2nd street" Bridge. As a result, St Matthews gets hudreds of dollars a year in shopping revenue from me, and Jefforsnville gets none.

But if Jeffersonville could be connected by a bridge that weren't such an ordeal, say one leaving from the middle of a park, then it would suddenly become a viable destination for a lot of people.

I'd rate this article Must Read: "Louisville: A Tale of Two Cities".

Urbanophile, a highly respected regional blogger, takes on the Ohio River Bridges project. He makes some great points. I refer you to his article and 8664's review of it.

Edit: fixed typeo in title: "Urbanophile siezes up Ohio River Bridges, 8664", heh heh.

Highways to Nowhere: The 7 Most Ridiculous New Roads Being Built In America

At the Infrastructurist, Yonah Freemark blasts the Ohio River Bridges Project, and offers this warning:

At a White House gathering last week, both Barack Obama and Joe Biden warned America’s governors not to squander stimulus funds on ill-conceived infrastructure projects. “Six months from now,” Biden said, “if the verdict on this effort is that we’ve wasted the money, we built things that were unnecessary, or we’ve done things that are legal but make no sense, then, folks, don’t look for any help from the federal government for a long while.”

Nowhere is this warning more pertinent than in building new roads. Misguided road building can encourage sprawl, make communities less livable, and devastate the local environment. We looked at shovel-ready new highway projects across the country that are either getting stimulus money or could potentially get some and found seven that, in Biden’s words, “make no sense.”

Read what he has to say, and also find out which other regional megaprojects make the cut for the worst of the worst.

Below is CART's unpublished response to last Monday's bridge project cheerleading.

To the Editor of the Courier-Journal,

I would like to respond to Ed Glasscock of the “Build the Bridges Coalition” who complained in Monday’s CJ Readers Forum that the legislature didn’t pass legislation to fund the Bridges Project.  Mr. Glasscock’s main point is that we need these bridges for the jobs they create and the economic benefits that will occur from this investment. Unfortunately, Mr. Glasscock’s statistics are obsolete.  They are based upon the 1998 Bridges study and those figures were based upon data from the 1990’s.  They are no longer valid and certainly don’t reflect our needs in this century.

http://www.8664.org/2009/03/no-tolling-authority-legislation-passed.html

Today's 8664 story is a must read. Rather than reproduce it here, I refer you to the  8664 site.

Update #1

C-J: The General Assembly's 2008 highway construction bill is invalid because it was not delivered to the governor on time, a judge ruled yesterday.

I'm not sure what this will mean for the Ohio River Bridges Project. Check back for updates.

The C-J deduces that state gas tax revenue loss from high oil prices might impact our ability to buy new or maintain old automotive infrastructure: Falling gas sales could hurt state road projeccts. In related news, Ford management declares focus on smaller vehicles is 'permanent', bad news for the local SUV plant workers.