When will 471 South Open???

Tiff has the bridge scoop 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're waking up with fifth in the morning.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Hi kiss, Hi, good morning. You can imagine how bad
for seventy one is for people. If you end up
talking about it at a party where there's an open bar,
that's how bad it is right now. Hi, Brian Combs
seven hundred WLW.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Are we ever going to be able to drive on
four seventy one south again? Yes?

Speaker 1 (00:25):
The question is when? Oh, hi, Department of Transportation still
does not have a timetable for when the repairs will
be complete. We're thinking mid December, probably three four more weeks.
That's about what it took to repair the Brent Spence
Bridge when it caught fire and was heavily damaged about
four years ago. So if you've been in Sawyer Point lately,

(00:47):
what you see now is that they have they call
them suring towers. They look like monster jacks like you'd
put under your car, but basically there are six of
these towers right under the bridge where the fire was,
and it will support the bridge so Cruz can get
up there start the heavy construction work of removing the
steel beams that were damaged and taking the bridge deck

(01:09):
that was damaged, the concrete out and At this point,
they're still not sure how much is going to have
to be removed.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
It looks bad.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, So once they figure that out, they'll know about
how long the repairs will take. You know. In the meantime,
people are just stuck in horrible traffic jams trying to
get into Newport.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
John John told me yesterday that it takes him an hour,
an hour, an hour and fifteen minutes to get home.
That's crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
It took my wife an hour and a half to
get from Sawyer Point to Newport the other night. I'm
no kidding, it was ninety minutes to go from She
came off Columbia Parkway at Egleston, got stuck on Egleston
and the massive traffic jam there, tried to get the
Pete Rose Way and then Pete Rose Way to the

(01:56):
Taylor Southgate Bridge to go into Newport where the roundabout
is just you know, we've asked repeatedly of the city,
you know, why aren't some police being posted down there
to manually run the lights and to help direct traffic,
And unfortunately we've gotten no response from the city to
that question. The Ohio Department of Transportation tells us that

(02:17):
they and their quote here is that they are keenly
aware of the traffic congestion in the area, but at
this point they say, there's not a whole lot that
they can do. They're looking at maybe, you know, setting
up new detours or trying to funnel traffic into that area. Different.
But boy, if you've got an event going on at
the Heritage Bank Center, yeah, or like the Sunday a

(02:38):
week ago when the Bengals were down there, I mean
it's gridlock. I mean there's nowhere you can go. The
people are trying to get out of the garage at
the same time that the people are trying to get
to the bridge, and you know, people are laying on
their horns and flip at each other off.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
It feels to me which I am familiar with. Okay, So,
if you had to pick a date just to give
someone hope as to when you think it's going to
get back to normal.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
I think it'll be right before Christmas. I'm thinking maybe
like the second week of December.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Truly a nightmare.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Well, thank you, Brian I am for coming in and
for you if you're just listening right now, go just
know that we feel your pain.