4 lanes or 2? Transportation officials discuss future of Cairo bridge

CAIRO, Ill. — The 82-year-old bridge between Cairo and Wickliffe, Kentucky, will be replaced before it reaches its 100th anniversary, according to the Kentucky transportation officials.

"We would like for people to be driving on a new bridge sometime in the next 15 years," according to Keith Todd, public information officer with the District One office of the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) in Paducah.

KYTC is working with the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) to design and construct a new bridge they say will be safer and more reliable than the existing span, officially known as the "U.S. 51 Ohio River Cairo Bridge," which opened in 1937.

IDOT and KYTC hosted a pair of public information meetings about the project earlier this week in Wickliffe and Cairo to collect public feedback and answer questions about the project.

"The most common comment I heard from people at the meetings was 'How fast can you build it?'" Todd said. He estimated 250 people attended the meetings including some from Poplar Bluff, Dexter, Sikeston and Charleston in Missouri.

And although Cape Girardeau is about 40 miles from the bridge, Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce President John Mehner said it's an important link between Southeast Missouri and Western Kentucky.

"Certainly from an overall transportation network perspective, that bridge is vital," Mehner said. "The more connections we have between states and between interstate highways (such as Interstate 55 in Missouri and Interstate 24 in Kentucky) the better."

Ultimately, Mehner added, "we still would like to get to I-24 from here with some sort of straight route, but as for the Cairo bridge, it needs to be replaced just as we replaced our original Mississippi River bridge here in 2003."

Missouri and Kentucky are the only neighboring states in the nation that do not have a direct road connection, and although a new bridge still won't directly connect the Show Me and Bluegrass states, Todd said it will provide motorists with a wider and safer bridge over the Ohio River.

In 2014, a planning study commissioned by KYTC recommended a preferred corridor for the new bridge immediately upstream from the existing bridge. "They built the old bridge at a good spot so it makes sense we should be the new one somewhere fairly close to the existing bridge," Todd said.

Measuring 5,865 feet in length, the Cairo bridge is the longest and westernmost bridge leading into Kentucky. When it was built, its design was considered state of the art, but it no longer meets national or state design standards and is considered too narrow for some traffic. The existing bridge deck is 22.5 feet wide with 10-foot traffic lanes and shoulder areas just over a foot wide in either direction.

"One of the things we're looking at with the new bridge is having lanes that are wide enough that farm equipment can cross it fairly comfortably," he said, adding that it hasn't been determined at this point whether the bridge will initially have two or four lanes of traffic. "That's something that's still under consideration. There might be an option of opening it as a two-lane bridge with a deck wide enough that if we needed to add a lane later we could convert a breakdown lane or shoulder area into a travel lane and eventually make it a four-lane bridge. The thing with bridges, though, is that when you make it one foot wider, the cost goes up millions of dollars."

Speaking of cost, Todd said "we have a working budget of about $230 million, give or take about $10 million." The cost will be jointly shared by IDOT and KYTC.

"Sometime over the next year or two our engineers will come up with a design proposal for the type of bridge that will work best," Todd said. "We're in conversations now with the U.S. Coast Guard about what they would recommend in the way of a navigation channel opening (under the bridge). Because of the high level of barge traffic in that area, navigational needs will probably dictate the bridge design."

An average of 5,500 vehicles cross the bridge daily. Trucks account for about 35% of that traffic, which is a higher percentage than the KYTC sees on other bridges, according to Todd.

"One of the things we're looking at is ongoing maintenance work on the existing bridge to make sure it remains serviceable until we get a new bridge constructed," Todd said. "When the bridge was built, the typical vehicle was like a Model A Ford and the average truck was also a lot smaller. The world has changed quite a bit since the bridge was designed and constructed. It has served us well over the years but it's time to move on to something that will hopefully serve us for another 75 to 100 years into the future."

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