Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Milton Madison Bridge is Progressing


By Randall Embry
Transportation Planner

The Milton Madison Bridge Project is currently underway.  Many wonder how engineers can make this happen without causing a major shutdown of the bridge, disrupting the communities of Milton, KY and Madison, IN, and affecting the 10,000 vehicles that cross it each day.

Walsh Construction out of Chicago, IL has come up with an innovative technique called “truss sliding”, which entails sliding a 2,426 foot long truss bridge onto the existing piers of the Milton Madison Bridge. Over the past year, barges have been set up along the Milton side of the Ohio River to construct the trusses.  Once the new trusses have been constructed, they are moved by barge over to the bridge site and raised up by strand jacks to rest on temporary piers next to the existing bridge.  This process will only require interruption of cross-river traffic for a total of 10 days during the construction of the new bridge.  The first closure of the bridge was April 25-28, 2012.  The next closure is scheduled for early 2013.  In addition to building the Milton Madison Bridge, Walsh Construction is a member of both teams that were recently selected for the East End and Downtown portions of the Louisville-Southern Indiana Ohio River Bridges Project.  In the not-too-distant future, there will be three major bridges over the Ohio River under construction in the KIPDA region. 

For more information on this innovative construction process and for further updates on the Milton Madison Bridge project, go to www.miltonmadisonbridge.com.

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