Indiana

WVB East End Partners comprising Walsh, Vinci Concessions and Belfinger begin construction this month of the East End Bridge over the Ohio River under a longterm design/finance/build/operate/maintain/availability-payments contract with an Indiana state agency.

The completely new bridge plus approach roads on both sides will connect SR265 in Indiana with the Gene Snyder Freeway in Kentucky completing a loop route around the Louisville/Southern Indiana metro area.

Construction cost is $763m.

Indiana Finance Authority has closed the contractual side of the deal with WVB (Walsh, Vinci and Bilfinger Berger) East End Partners to design and build the East End Crossing, a new toll bridge and linking highways on the northern outskirts of the bistate Louisville metro area. The commercial close this week is to be followed by financial close "early spring 2013."

2012-11-16: Indiana Finance Authority has announced it expects to get the new East End Crossing of the Ohio River near Louisville KY built for $763m or 23% below its estimates and with a proposal to open the bridge by October 2016 versus the end June 2017 expected date.

2012-10-16: Indiana and Kentucky officials are formally approving agreements governing the construction, financing and management of the $2.6 billion Ohio River bridges project, which adds two new tolled river crossings in Louisville and rebuild downtown interchanges on both sides.

2012-08-29: Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear and federal highway administrator Victor Mendez are leading figures in a ceremony Thursday to mark the start of work on $2.6 billion of new crossings of the Ohio River in the bi-state Louisville KY metro area.

2012-07-19: i-Zoom the local marketing term for electronic toll transponders sold in Indiana is being dropped in favor of the better known E-ZPass brand.

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and Anthony Copeland mayor of the city of East Chicago say they've reached an agreement-in-principle with United Bridge Partners to build a new toll bridge to replace a deteriorated free bridge on Cline Avenue, state route 912, the city's major access over the Indiana Harbor Canal west.

The Illinois Senate has passed legislation (SB3318) supporting the east-west tollroad that would go from I-55 in Illinois to I-65. This project is in the far south of the greater Chicago area.

And there's lots of other activity to develop and advance the project.

There's a bistate website on the project where you can sign up for news:

http://www.illianacorridor.org

TOLLROADSnews 2012-04-01

There's a flurry of activity on both the Indiana and Kentucky sides of the Ohio River around the Louisville-South Indiana metro area with the two state governments planning to use toll revenues to help finance some $2.6 billion in improvements to the cross river connections.

Legislation granting the Indiana Governor and his executive branch greater tolling powers seems to be moving to approval by the state General Assembly. The measure as sponsored by Governor Mitch Daniels (SB473) granted the executive branch a free hand in developing new toll roads and tolling of additional lanes on existing roads.