Welcome to the Roadscapes Wednesday segment! Each week here on Geek Alabama, Roadscapes Wednesday will feature roads and infrastructure related topics. Geek Alabama Editor / Publisher Nathan Young is often called the “road geek” for a good reason, Nathan loves roads and loves talking about roads!
More than 100,000 people drive this highway every day. The problem? One of its bridges needed to be replaced. The solution? Tear it down, slide in a brand-new bridge, and reopen the road—all in a single weekend.
Normally, replacing a bridge on one of the busiest highway corridors in America takes months of closures, traffic shifts, and disruption. But on this project, crews had just 48 hours to demolish an aging bridge, move a brand-new one into place, and reopen the road to more than 100,000 daily commuters.
To pull it off, contractor Ralph L. Wadsworth Construction used a technique called Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC).
Instead of building the replacement bridge in place, crews constructed the entire structure beside the highway while traffic continued flowing normally. Then, during a carefully planned weekend closure, they demolished the old bridge and slid the new one into position.
Sounds simple.
Except this bridge weighed 5.3 million pounds, making it the heaviest bridge slide in the project’s history. Months of engineering, planning, demolition, and preparation all came down to a single moment when hydraulic jacks began pushing the structure toward its final home.
Categories: Roadscapes Stuff
