Indiana State Rep. Wendy Dant Chesser convened a group of people from both sides of the river to discuss potential solutions to make the overused 2nd Street Bridge safer. I can save them some, time because there are only about four ways:
The first is to tear it down and rebuild it bigger. That's not going to happen, so let's move on.
The second way, God forbid, is to make it a toll bridge too so traffic will be driven back to the larger Kennedy and Lincoln Bridges — horrible idea.
Third, they could make it two or three lanes instead of four. The bridge would be safer, but the backups on either side would be a dangerous nightmare.
The best option is to take the tolls off the new bridges, which immediately solves the 2nd Street Bridge problem. Tolls on the new bridges are forcing traffic onto the 2nd Street Bridge, which wasn't built to handle this kind of volume. Besides, we've already paid our federal taxes, which should have been used to build the new bridges in the first place.
Clearly, a real mess has been created by tolling. Short of eliminating them, none of the options to fix the problem appear to be desirable.
I'll be eager to see if any of our federal politicians from Kentucky or Indiana are bold enough to suggest removing the tolls.
I'm Bill Lamb, and that's my Point of View.
