LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Some relief is coming for drivers who take the Kennedy Bridge from southern Indiana to Louisville.
The left three lanes of the Kennedy Bridge, which have been closed since Feb. 27, will “temporarily” reopen this week.
By Friday, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet said all lanes are set to reopen on the bridge that carries traffic from Interstate 65 South over the Ohio River.
The reopening is scheduled to happen in stages, so equipment can be removed.
Starting Tuesday, KYTC said two of the three lanes will reopen, while the leftmost lane will stay closed through Friday. Friday, the closure will shift to the left two lanes so crews can remove equipment before fully reopening all lanes.
The lanes were closed so crews could make repairs to the bridge’s expansion joints, according to KYTC. The agency said a damaged expansion joint on the Indiana approach needed to be repaired in preparation for a long-planned project to replace all expansion joints on the bridge.
That project is scheduled to begin in July, and will bring intermittent lane closures until April 2026.
This isn’t the first time the left three lanes of the bridge have been closed for immediate repairs to the expansion joints. Three lanes were closed in May 2024 after several vehicles were damaged.
The expansion joints resemble interlocking fingers and connect slabs on the 1960s-era bridge’s deck, which allow the structure to expand and contract while preventing concrete from cracking.
A 2021 WDRB investigation revealed there were “errors in construction” at the expansion joint when the bridge got a $22 million facelift as part of its conversion to one-way traffic during the Ohio River Bridges Project.
Two months after the work, an inspector noticed that the joint was misaligned and moving when trucks passed over it. The Transportation Cabinet told WDRB in 2021 that air pockets developed when the new concrete deck was poured and were not “visible or detectable.”
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