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Connecting manufacturers in the industrial north to booming southern cities in Georgia and beyond in the south, the Brent Spence Bridge that spans the Ohio River is a debacle to all who know it.

Built and designed in the early 1960s to accommodate a maximum of 85,000 vehicles a day, today twice as many cars and trucks traverse it along the Interstate-75, a 1,785-mile (2,873km) route that stretches from the border with Canada in the north to the Florida Keys. Its narrow lanes, curved approaches and absence of emergency access lanes meant that, following frequent accidents, drivers could find themselves stuck for hours.

Five years ago, it was shut down for 41 days following a chemical spill. Last year, it ranked among the worst trucking bottlenecks in the country as it carries about $1bn worth of freight every day.

While its problems have been obvious for decades, politicians were never able to come to an agreement over who would pay for a new bridge, until Joe Biden in 2024 announced $1.6bn in federal funding as part of a wider effort to upgrade the country’s ageing infrastructure.

Last month, after decades of failed attempts, a project involving the construction of a companion bridge able to accommodate a similar number of cars and trucks on 10 lanes across two decks finally commenced.

But while the new bridge, expected to be completed in 2031, is being pitched as playing a significant role in reducing freight and travel times, it’s not without its critics.

Before a piece of asphalt has been dug up, its original cost has risen by $800m, fueling fears that the final bill to taxpayers could be far greater than the $3bn originally proposed. The governments of Ohio and Kentucky, through taxpayer funds rather than road tolls, are paying for the majority of the construction cost.

“The existing highway already contributes to high levels of noise, particle and other air pollution in our neighborhood. As the expanded highway allows for more traffic to flow through the region, this pollution will increase,” says Amy Townsend-Small, a resident of Covington, Kentucky, and professor of environmental studies at the University of Cincinnati. A number of residents on the Kentucky side of the project will also find themselves displaced as a result of the new bridge construction.

“The proposed project will also decrease the amount of green space in our neighborhood. The expanded highway area includes a popular park in Covington, called Goebel Park. It’s not clear what the new, smaller, park will look like yet.”

Environmental impact complaints filed by citizen groups against the project in 2024 are still pending in federal court.

The project is about much more than building a new bridge. Its location in the heart of Cincinnati means an additional eight miles of highway are being built or modified in order to fit the new bridge into the existing road transport network, where traffic is regularly backed up for miles.

More than 60 years ago, residents of Cincinnati’s West End were split apart by the building of Interstate-75 through neighborhoods, forcing the displacement of about 25,000 people, mostly African Americans, a move that prompted Cincinnati’s current mayor to issue an apology in 2023.

Today, some residents once again find themselves facing more construction as part of the new bridge corridor project.

Project developers say a new, widened overpass bridge in the West End would “improve connectivity” while “potentially allowing for enhanced landscaping, social gathering areas and small retail development”. More than $441m is set to be spent on this part of the project.

But residents say that money could be better spent on housing and other services.

“I’m a transit enthusiast – streetcar, rail,” says Galen Gordon, president of the West End Community Council, who says that while efforts to curb vehicular pollution detailed in the plan could be a positive move, local housing needs should be a priority.

“We don’t have here a middle [for housing]. There’s no first-time homebuyer opportunity. Those millions could help fill a gap and find ways to ensure we could get first-time homebuyer housing here.”

Last summer, the real estate company Redfin ranked Cincinnati as having the highest median rent asking price among 44 metro areas across the country, one of only four cities to see rents increase at that time.

Moreover, West End residents, thousands of whom live next to a stretch of the I-75 that’s regularly backed up with traffic approaching the Brent Spence Bridge, have some of the highest asthma rates in Cincinnati.

It’s happening at a time when the cost of living is rising fast due to a wider gentrification effort in the West End that includes the soccer franchise FC Cincinnati buying of swathes of property in the area as part of a proposed $332m development plan.

However, the Ohio department of transportation (ODOT) says the new transportation arteries will create significant upsides.

“This project will benefit not only residents of Cincinnati, but the entire region, and even the nation,” says Matt Bruning, a spokesperson for the ODOT.

“On the Ohio side, we’re adding 4,590ft of new sidewalks and 7,125ft of new shared-use paths along streets … We’ve also freed up about 11 acres of land that can remain green space or be developed.”

Still, dozens of studies have shown that widening existing or building new highways does not automatically lead to reduced congestion.

Emails sent to the Cincinnati mayor’s office asking whether building more roads and highways is the solution the city needs at a time when home-building and densification are priorities for most progressive metro areas were not responded to. A spokesperson for the city of Cincinnati responded, in part, that “the city is not building the bridge”.

For Townsend-Small, there’s a contradiction between the Cincinnati authorities’ comments and actions.

“Cincinnati has a net-zero greenhouse gas emissions goal, and I don’t understand how a highway expansion fits within that goal,” she says, “but the mayor of Cincinnati has publicly supported the highway expansion plan.”