Transportation
The RLC strongly advocates for greater transportation infrastructure to support the needs of our region. The Greater Louisville/Southern Indiana region is a major transportation hub for air, highways, waterways and rail. Our region’s resources include:

• The UPS WorldPort located in Louisville, Kentucky that ships packages around the world within 24 hours turnaround
• The Louisville International Airport that supports 90 commercial flights departing daily to more than 50 cities
• Three major converging Interstate Highways (I-65, I-64, I-71) in the Greater Louisville/Southern Indiana region that reach two-thirds of the U.S. markets within a one day’s drive
• The Port of Indiana-Jeffersonville, known as Clark Maritime Center, that provides 12-month barge access to world markets via the Inland Waterway System and the Gulf of Mexico for a wide variety of commodities and general cargo products such as corn, soybeans, fertilizer, plastics, paper, iron and steel
• CSX and the Louisville Indiana Railroad Co. that connect to seven Class I railroads

Thus, transportation is a crucial issue for the RLC. The major transportation topic currently facing our community is the building of the Ohio River Bridges. To ease the congestion on the Kennedy Bridge, connecting Kentucky and Indiana, and through Spaghetti Junction in Louisville and to improve access for the more than 18% of employees who reside in Southern Indiana and work in downtown Louisville, two new bridges over the Ohio River have been a key agenda item for the RLC since its inception.

With the backing of RLC, 1SI and GLI , the Build the Bridges Coalition was formed in 2007. The goal of the organization is to advocate for lowering the project funding total and for accelerating the construction schedule for the bridges.

The RLC continues to remain actively involved in supporting the Build the Bridges Coalition and the need for two Ohio River Bridges.

Education/Workforce Development
The Greater Louisville/Southern Indiana region has many major higher educational institutions and workforce development opportunities. Educational institutions include:

• University of Louisville
• Indiana University Southeast
• Bellarmine University
• Spalding University
• IVY Tech Community College
• Sullivan University
• Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary
• Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
• McKendree College
• Jefferson Community College
• Webster University

The RLC supports the need to reduce ‘brain drain’ in our region and to attract the best and brightest talents to our region. Programs that help meet these goals and our workforce development goals include:

• Junior Achievement
• Kentuckiana Metroversity, Inc.
• HIRE
  

Bi-State Revenue/Tax Sharing
To promote greater economic development for the Greater Louisville/Southern Indiana region, a bi-state revenue/tax-sharing plan is needed. Specifically, the RLC is concentrating its efforts on the River Ridge Commerce Center, using this 6,000 acre development as a pilot project.

The River Ridge Commerce Center is located in Clark County, Indiana, along the Ohio
River. The site is a former munitions plant that manufactured gunpowder during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. In 1998, Congress gave 6,000 acres of the original site to the River Ridge Development Authority for economic development and the expansion of the Charlestown State Park.

The RLC continues to advocate for a bi-state revenue and tax sharing agreement to enhance the economic development efforts of potentially the largest industrial site in Greater Louisville/Southern Indiana that the region can use to its economic advantage.