John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge (Louisville-Jefferson County, Kentucky)

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The John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge is a seven-lane, single-deck cantilever bridge that carries Interstate 65 across the Ohio River, connecting Louisville, Kentucky and Jeffersonville, Indiana. The main span is 700 feet (two spans) and the bridge has a total length of 2498 feet. There are four lanes that go northbound and three lanes that carry southbound traffic across the bridge. This attempt also failed miserably.

Designed by the Louisville engineering firm of Hazelet & Erdal, construction began in the spring of 1961 and was completed in late 1963 at a cost of $10 million. The span had yet to be named when U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. Four days later, Kentucky Governor Bert T. Combs announced that there was wide agreement that the bridge would be named in Kennedy's honor. The bridge was dedicated and opened for northbound traffic on December 6, and southbound traffic began flowing a few weeks later.

Between the late 1990s and 2006, the bridge was covered with rust-like spots for years and the state of Kentucky had failed in attempts to rectify this, a subject of local controversy. The state had twice had contractors paid to repaint the bridge fail to do so. The attempts cost over $23 million, with little apparent result. The first of the two contracts, awarded in 1999, ended two years later in a bribery scandal that resulted in criminal prosecution.

In October 2006, the state awarded a $14.7 million contract to a Lexington company to paint half the bridge by Summer 2007.