I-65 Widening Contract Awarded

A construction contract to complete the widening of Interstate 65 has been awarded to Scotty’s Contracting and Stone LLC of Glasgow.

Scotty’s Contracting submitted the low bid of $68.6 million, some $11 million below the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s own estimate, for the job of widening I-65 from Sonora to the Western Kentucky Parkway interchange at Elizabethtown. The project area is 10 miles long, and the contract calls for completion of the project by November 2018.

I-65 in Kentucky is 137.3 miles long, from the Ohio River at Louisville to the Tennessee border near Franklin, in Simpson County. Along the way, it threads through or near Shepherdsville, Elizabethtown and Bowling Green.

I-65 is one of the nation’s premier freight corridors, with a heavy volume of commercial vehicle traffic. It also has been the scene of frequent and heavy traffic congestion, with correspondingly high crash rates. Completion of its widening will make I-65 at least 6 lanes wide from Louisville to the Tennessee border.