COVINGTON, Ky. — From high in the sky to eye level, a sound barrier going up in Covington is unlike any other in Kentucky.
“It’s the first one in the state,” Stacee Hans, Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s project manager for the Brent Spence Bridge Corridor Project, said.
Made with see-through material instead of concrete, huge panels have been going up next to Crescent Avenue, which is just west of I-71/75 and just south of the Brent Spence Bridge.
“This pilot project is a thousand feet to give the community an opportunity to see what a transparent noise wall might look like,” Hans said.
Hans is managing the Bluegrass State’s portion of the $3.6 billion Brent Spence Corridor re-design project, which will include a companion bridge to improve traffic flow on the highway.
Hans and her transportation cabinet colleagues listened when residents living near the Ohio River expressed concerns about giant sound walls blocking their view of Mainstrasse and Cincinnati’s skyline.
“The interstate is part of your community. Whether you like it or not, it’s part of your community,” Gary Valentine, an executive advisor with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, said. “And as a cabinet, we need to try to be better neighbors.”
“So that’s where the idea of a pilot project came into mind,” Hans said.
The wall will cover a thousand feet when it’s complete in a few weeks. The entire project is expected to be finished in October.
Using a sound measuring app, noise levels climbed above 70 decibels on the highway side of the wall. Behind the barrier, they were in the mid-to-upper 50-decibel range — a difference that could spur other neighborhoods to ask for similar see-through walls.
“This allows us to have another tool in our toolbox,” Hans said.
The cost of the transparent wall is approximately $4.2 million. A similar, non-transparent sound barrier ranges from $3.8 to $4 million, according to a District 6 spokesman for the transportation cabinet.
(Story by WLWT’s Investigative Reporter Todd Dykes)
