Louisville Bridge Is Falling Down, Part 2

Monday was a nightmare along the Ohio River in Louisville yesterday morning as traffic was backed up for five miles due to the closure of the Sherman Minton bridge this weekend because inspections revealed cracks in the steel.

The Sherman Minton bridge is closed and there is no word yet on when it will re-open. Monday morning was the first day Hoosiers had to make their way into Kentucky with only two bridges instead of three.


Officials say the biggest issue was on I-65 where it was back up about 5 miles to the bridge. Typically they only see a mile backup.

"We've seen traffic delays on I-65 and that's what we expected," says Andrea Clifford with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. Road and emergency officials from Kentucky and Indiana kept a close eye on all of it at the MetroSafe Command Center and relayed that information to the extra officers and crew out on the roads.

And let me repeat:  nobody knows how long the Sherman Minton will be out of commission.  Most likely it will be several months.  You figure that adds two hours to the commute time for 100,000 commuting workers in the Louisville area every day for six months or so, and that's ballpark hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity...on top of the cost of fixing the bridge.

You tell me more regular maintenance spent on that bridge over a number of weekend closures wouldn't be worth less than what this is costing Louisville taxpayers in money and more importantly time.

But hey, this is what happens when you say "government is worthless and wastes our money" and you insist on smaller government, people.  You get bridges that are falling apart.

Enjoy, assholes.  No sympathy when you vote for the party that wants to cut funding for bridges and highways by 33%.