Transportation in Louisville, Kentucky

As with most American cities, Transportation in Louisville, Kentucky is based primarilly on automobiles. However, the city traces its foundation to the era where the river was the primary means of transportation, and railroads has always been an important part of local industry for over a century. In more recent times Louisville has become a national hub for air cargo, providing a great number of local jobs. Most recently, Louisville has come into the national spotlight for its initiatives to promote both utilitarian and recreational bicycling.

Roads

See also: Roads of Louisville, Kentucky

The city's road system is arranged in a fairly typical system common to many cities in the United States. Streets in the downtown business district are arranged as a grid, with several alternating one-way streets. Many major roads begin at or near the downtown area and travel outwards from the city like the spokes of a wheel. There are also several roads, such as Bardstown Road and Shelbyville Road, which lead outwards from Louisville to the outlying Kentucky towns of Bardstown and Shelbyville, respectively. (See External links for links to several online maps.)

Diagram of the Kennedy Interchange ("Spaghetti Junction")

Interstates I-64, I-65 pass through and I-71 begins in Louisville. Since all three of these highways intersect at virtually the same location in the city just east of Downtown, this spot has become known as "Spaghetti Junction", as the large mass of highways and exits resembles a bowl of spaghetti when viewed from the air. Louisville Waterfront Park is built under and near this interchange.

I-264 (Henry Watterson Expressway east of US 31W and Shawnee Expressway west of US 31W) and I-265 (Gene Snyder Freeway) form loops around the city on the Kentucky side. Plans for two more bridges to connect Louisville to Indiana are nearing completion. One bridge will be located downtown for relief of I-65 traffic. The other will connect the Indiana and Kentucky I-265's (via KY 841). Interestingly enough, Louisville is the only city in the nation to contain two consecutively-numbered, three-digit Interstate highways.

Airports

Louisville's main airport is the centrally located Louisville International Airport, whose IATA Airport Code (SDF) reflects its former name of Standiford Field. The airport is also home to the UPS Worldport. The first runway was constructed in 1941 and used for World War II aircraft, and the airport opened for business on November 15 1947.

Well over 3.5 million passengers and over 3 billion pounds (1,400,000 t) of cargo pass through the airport each year. The airport, having recently completed major terminal renovations, has three operational runways. The two parallel main runways run north/south and allow for simultaneous takeoffs and landings. The east/west runway is shorter and generally only used in adverse weather conditions.

The much smaller Bowman Field is used mainly for general aviation. Some business aviation, as well as flight instruction and other private flying primarily operate out of this field.

Waterways

The McAlpine Locks and Dam is located on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, near the downtown area. The locks were constructed to allow shipping past the Falls of the Ohio. In 2001 over 55 million tons of commodities passed through the locks. A new lock is currently being constructed to replace two of the auxiliary locks, with a projected completion date of 2008.

Public transit

The Toonerville II Trolleys provide transportation throughout Louisville's downtown and Bardstown Road districts.

Public transportation includes buses and chartered vans run by the Transit Authority of River City (TARC). The city buses serve all parts of downtown Louisville and Jefferson County, as well as Kentucky suburbs in Oldham County, Bullitt County, and the Indiana suburbs of Jeffersonville, Clarksville and New Albany. In addition to regular city buses, transit throughout the downtown hotel and shopping districts is served by a series of motorized trolleys (see right) known as the Toonerville II Trolley.

Louisville has several multi-use trails for bikes and pedestrians, many of which are not connected to each other rendering them useless for traversing the city. In the central city, there are several on-road bike paths that help cyclists get around the city by bicycle.

Rail

Louisville has historically been a major center for railway traffic. The Louisville and Nashville Railroad was once headquartered here, before it was purchased by CSX Transportation. Today the city is served by two major freight railroads, CSX (with a major classification yard in the southern part of the metro area) and Norfolk Southern. Five major main lines connect Louisville to the rest of the region. Two regional railroads, the Paducah and Louisville Railway and the Louisville and Indiana Railroad, also serve the city. With the discontinuance of the short-lived Kentucky Cardinal in 2003, Amtrak passenger trains no longer serve Louisville; it is thus the third-largest city in the country (behind Phoenix and Columbus) with no passenger rail service.

Bikeways

Louisville has a strong bicycling heritage. While not as popular as it was at the turn of the 20th century, bicycling is starting to make a comeback as a recreational sport and, most importantly, as a transportation option at the turn of the 21st.

Since its first Bike Summit in 2005, Louisville has rapidly gained recognition for its bicycling initiatives. In March 2007, Mayor Jerry Abramson delivered the keynote address at the League of American Bicyclists National Bike Summit in Washington D.C. where he described the history, present reality, and future of bicycling in Louisville. It is well worth visiting theFredCast Cycling Podcast to listen to this speech.

The city is developing on-street bike lanes and shared-lanes, but the most notable of its bicycling initiatives is the development of a one-hundred mile "Metro Loop" trail to encircle the entire county. By the end of 2007, nearly 1/3 of this loop will be complete, with another 1/3 to 1/2 coming in the next three to five years as part of the Floyd's Fork corridor project. The entire project is being overseen by the City of Parks initiative. $38 million dollars in federal funding has been secured for the Floyd's Fork portion of this project alone, with another $20 million in private funding.

In 2006, Louisville was named a Bronze-Level Bicycle Friendly Community by the League of American Bicyclists in recognition of its commitment to developing bicycling infrastructure and promoting bicycling education and awareness. The Bike Louisville program in city government works closely with partner organizations such as Bicycling for Louisville and the Louisville Bicycle Club to implement the recommendations of the 2005 Bike Summit as outlined in the Bike-Friendly Louisville Plan.

For more details about bicycling in Louisville and a map of Louisville Metro Bikeways, visit Bike Louisville Online.