Public Attends Meetings to Comment on Possible East End Bridge Designs
Officials with the Ohio River Bridges Project met with the public at two open houses to discuss six possible designs for the bridge that will connect Utica, Indiana and Prospect, Kentucky.
March 2006 - Officials with the Ohio River Bridges Project met with the public at two open houses to discuss the status of the East End Bridge and obtain feedback regarding six possible designs for the bridge that will connect Utica, Indiana and Prospect, Kentucky.
The first of the two meetings took place in Utica at the Utica Community Center on Tuesday, March 7. The second meeting took place in Louisville at the Brownsboro Inn on Brownsboro Road on Thursday, March 9. There were two identical presentations at each location, the first at 4:00 and the second at 6:00.
The meetings allowed for public comment on the designs and questions for officials involved with the project. The East End Bridge project design team will accept comments on the six bridge type alternatives through the end of March 2006.
Dan Carrier, project manager for the East End Bridge gave a brief review of the public involvement process and provided an overview of the six alternative bridges under consideration: one arch bridge and five cable-stayed bridges.
A1 – Basket Handle Arch
A2 – Cable-Stayed A Shape Tower
A3 – Cable-Stayed Diamond Tower
A4 – Cable-Stayed Single Tower
A5 – Minimized Cable-Stayed
A6 – Suspension Cable-Stayed
After reviewing the series of public meetings and open house events that took place during the fall of 2005 and early 2006, Carrier offered a summary of public comments.
Miguel Rosales, architect for the East End Bridge, then discussed the context of the bridge – emphasizing its unique rural setting, historic area and natural landscape environment. Rosales then discussed the results of the polling preferences for the bridge concepts viewed in Step 2. The polling indicated preferences for:
• a bridge that blended into the landscape,
• short towers,
• visual transparency/openess,
• slender piers,
• fewer piers,
• thin decks,
• low maintenance with minimum painted steel,
• arch and cable stayed bridges were preferred over truss bridges.
From the results of the preference polling in Step 2, truss bridges were eliminated from futher considerations.
Then Ted Grossardt, program manager of the University of Kentucky Transportation Research Center, stepped in to lead the polling session of the meeting. For a series of different polling sessions, attendees used a remote touch pad to electronically communicate their opinions about the bridge rendering being shown. The results of each polling session were projected on a separate screen, allowing the audience to see the results immediately.
The first polling session asked the audience to rate the overall compatibility of each alternative bridge rendering with the surrounding landscape. The views of the bridge shown included an aerial shot and a river bluff view.
Next, Grossardt asked the audience to consider the view of the bridge from multiple pedestrian viewpoints – with renderings for the audience to assess. Views of the bridge at night time, from the bridge pedestrian walkway, and from the shoreline were shown as the attendees submitted their ratings for each bridge alternative rendering.
The next polling session asked respondents to consider the view of the bridge while driving across it. The group was shown computer simulation videos of what a driver might experience while crossing each of the six bridge types. Upon viewing each segment, the group rated their opinion of the simulated experience shown on a TV screen.
Finally, during the last polling session of each presentation, attendees were asked to consider construction methods, construction costs, aesthetics and maintenance issues and prioritize each of these factors as more or less important than the others.
The audiences in both meetings favored the basket-handle arch bridge (A1), the minimized cable-stayed bridge (A5) and the suspension cable-stayed bridge (A6) – in various orders of preference. All feedback received at the meetings will be analyzed and utilized in refining the six alternatives to three.
After each polling session, Grossardt conducted a brief question and answer session to obtain additional verbal feedback about preferences and concerns about the bridges. All polling responses and verbal feedback were documented and will be submitted as part of the process for selecting the final bridge design.
Comments in the meetings including those favoring a bridge that is transparent, continued preference for limited number of piers and the concern that one bridge’s piers might collect too much river debris and require cleaning. Some attendees also preferred smoother lines and one questioned the feasibility of arching the deck, or roadway, to enhance the aesthetic appeal of the bridge.
Carrier closed each of the meetings with a review of upcoming meetings and events as the bridge selection process continues.