West Virginia breaking another record for bridge construction

The state of West Virginia is set to break another record for bridge construction with the completion of a supplemental Kanawha River crossing between Dunbar and South Charleston.

 

The first crossing between the two cities was completed in 1974 as the last project of Interstate 64's construction between Huntington and Charleston. Formerly, traffic had to divert to MacCorkle Avenue (U.S. Route 60) or Dunbar Avenue. The new four-lane steel-girder bridge, with a main span of 440 feet, was the largest in the United States at the time of its completion.

 

 

Today, construction is progressing on what will be the United State's longest continuous-segmental bridge adjacent to the 1974 span. The new bridge will service Interstate 64 eastbound traffic towards Charleston, while the existing span will be repurposed for westbound traffic towards Huntington. Work began in the summer of 2007 on the piers, and by the following spring, work was furthering on the delicately balanced superstructure.

 

 

Portable concrete forms extend from each end of a span segment -- eight spans total -- that straddles a pier and rolls along a set of rails mounted atop a pier. Four form travelers were used to pour the 16-foot segments. On June 17, 2009, the main span over the Kanawha River was complete at a staggering 760-feet in length. The bridge is scheduled for completion in October at a cost of $83 million.

 

 

Be sure to read up on the full history and check out more photographs of the 1974 bridge and the under-construction supplement.

This is a massive project. I remember driving through there on a weekly basis in 2004 and they had already been working on it for at least a year.

They were building the approaches, starting with Dunbar , then the South Charleston. It was a lack of financing that delayed the actual bridge. The six-lane portion in South Charleston closest to Charleston was completed in 1974, but it was four-lanes on the bridge and east to Huntington. The segment from Huntington to Nitro was widened around 2000, which left the bridge as the only four-lane gap. There would be backups for several miles during rush hour... and the tight curve at the approach didn't help things.

Very cool!