Five engineering lessons of the new bridge

Posted at 8:07 AM on October 1, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Bridges and roads

By way of Ohioan Corrie Bergeron, we're alerted to a little national publicity for our fair state that doesn't involve an anemic baseball offense.

Popular Mechanics is out with a feature story today on the new I-35W bridge.

The story behind the story of this 10-lane, 504-ft bridge is one of the most impressive infrastructure projects of the decade--the complete replacement of a major bridge in little more than a year, months before a deadline that was considered incredibly ambitious. When the team of FIGG Engineering, Flatiron Constructors and Manson Construction won the bid for the project, the date for reopening was set for December 24th of this year. During a visit to the construction site in February, we at Popular Mechanics asked everyone we came across, from taxi drivers to sandwich-shop waiters, whether it seemed like a realistic goal. No one was buying it. Minneapolis winters are too cold for construction, we were told. And why should anyone have faith in U.S. infrastructure when the I-35W had been deemed structurally deficient for years--one of more than 100,000 such bridges scheduled for major overhauls or complete reconstruction?

If only getting righthanded power hitter for the Twins were so easy.

Comments (1)

Thank you for providing that! I found it extremely interesting, as a civil engineer and being from Minnesota. I can't to drive across it myself.

Posted by Alanna in MI | October 1, 2008 11:25 AM

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