Shaw: "Plans for a downtown bridge parallel to the Kennedy should float, like a petrified cow pie, downriver."

When the accompanying 21st-century of Southern Indiana is written, the questions might sound like this:

Why were self-referential (not to mention reverential) economic oligarchs like Kerry Stemler given the task of planning this retro-atrocity?

What brand of Kool-Aid was served to Bob Caesar to cause him such fancy flights of oligarch fluffery?

Where was Ed Clere, anyway?

A wicked sister bridge, by Steve Shaw (LEO)

When the early 21st-century history of Louisville is written, if the Ohio River Bridges Project proceeds as planned, I can already hear the official refrain: “Mistakes were made.” Michael Kimmelman, a New York Times critic, made a big splash in the local news media last week. His conclusion: Plans for a downtown bridge parallel to the Kennedy should float, like a petrified cow pie, downriver ...

... Amid our highway construction fatigue, we’re contemplating years of downtown disarray and congestion — and tolls with no end in sight. Kimmelman is exactly right: “Louisville needs to devote far more resources to public transit.”

Let’s stop trying to defy the gravity of an increasingly poor and aging population and start living within our means. Our choice is clear: to repeat a mistake or make history with a vision.