Crews building the new bridge across the Mississippi River north of downtown St. Louis have hit an important project milestone.
The two 400-foot towers for the cables are complete. Within a week, workers will start connecting those cables, which will support the bridge deck. Project Manager Greg Horn with the Missouri Department of Transportation says there’s no easy part of a project like this, but there is a sense of relief at reaching this point: “The biggest challenge is usually the foundation work, the stuff that happens 100 feet below the surface, because we never know what you’re going to find, and we got through that. At least we now know what’s coming up. You still could have bad weather, you can have a lot of things that could affect it, but we’re through probably the most difficult part I think at this point.” Horn says the $667-million project is on budget, and on pace to meet the scheduled early 2014 opening.
The new bridge is a joint project between the Missouri Department of Transportation and the Illinois Department of Transportation. The new bridge will relocate Interstate 70 traffic over the Mississippi River to help reduce congestion on the Poplar Street and Martin Luther King Bridges
