LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Mayor Greg Fischer today opened the newly realigned intersection of Eighteenth Street, Dixie Highway and Broadway to traffic. The realignment eliminated a traffic bottleneck where the three streets converge at a major West End development site.
The $1.2 million project completed by TSI Construction last week rerouted Dixie Hwy slightly eastward to align it directly with Eighteenth Street. That got rid of a zigzag between the two streets that had required separate traffic signals at two intersections less than one hundred feet apart on Broadway, and connected them in a single intersection with a single set of lights.
Both the Republic Bank Foundation YMCA and the new corporate headquarters of Passport Health Plan—projects totaling nearly $160 million and bringing over 500 jobs to the area—are under construction at the intersection.
Noting the improved connections from all directions, Mayor Fischer said the realignment “helps to make this critical intersection a foundation for even more investment in West Louisville.” He also thanked the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet for its collaboration on the project.
Joining the mayor in the groundbreaking were Steve Tarver, president and CEO of YMCA of Greater Louisville; Metro Council President and District 6 Councilman David James; Councilwoman Barbara Sexton Smith of District 4, which includes the Broadway/Dixie/18th Street intersection; and Evon Smith, president and chief executive officer of One West, a nonprofit organization formed to encourage economic development in Louisville’s West End.
The realigned intersection will also be a Bus Rapid Transit stop at the northern anchor of the $50 million New Dixie Highway project. That project will improve safety, mobility and livability along a 14-mile corridor to the Gene Snyder Freeway.
Mayor Fischer said the realignment is on a growing list of recent development announcements across Louisville, and particularly west of Ninth Street.
The list includes a $29.5 million grant to convert the Beecher Terrace public housing development into a mixed-used, mixed-income community, the planned $30 million Heritage West track and field facility at 30th Street and Muhammad Ali Boulevard, development of Google Fiber, the Chef Space kitchen incubator in the former Jay’s Cafeteria, and more in addition to the YMCA and Passport projects.
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