Dixie Highway becomes 18th Street in downtown Louisville

LOUISVILLE, KY (WAVE) - Dixie Highway is one of the busiest roadways in Louisville, but change is coming. The road will become 18th Street downtown when the street moves northbound across Broadway.

City leaders and others were on hand Thursday for a groundbreaking to realign the intersection.

"We have been talking about all the development in West Louisville, one of the critical aspects of this is to get the 'dog-legged' straightened out here, that's been 'dog-legged' for way too long", Mayor Greg Fischer said. "And it's been an impediment to traffic coming down Broadway, coming down 18th."

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The realignment will reroute Dixie Highway slightly eastward to align it directly with 18th Street. The change will eliminate the zigzag and one of the traffic signals in each direction.

Navigating that intersection from any direction now requires moving through two traffic signals less than one hundred feet apart because the street zigzags at Broadway.

This is the same intersection that houses the $28 million West End Family YMCA project and the $130 million Passport Health Plan headquarters. There will also be a Bus Rapid Transit stop there, according to metro officials.

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