The state Department of Transportation on Thursday May 12 will conduct a public information hearing about the ongoing highway construction along Route 8/25 in Bridgeport. The hearing will take place 6 to 8 p.m. in City Hall council chambers, 45 Lyon Terrace. The plan includes lane closures of two periods of roughly 14 days each, starting in June. See DOT construction update site here.
The project involves the replacement of the superstructures (beams and concrete decks) of several bridges on Route 8/25 in Bridgeport approximately two miles north of Interstate 95. Also, included in the project is the rehabilitation of a large retaining wall supporting Route 8 and capacity improvements to two intersections on Lindley Street adjacent to Route 8 northbound.
>The bridges are part of CTDOT’s Bridge Program which prioritizes work based on a continuous assessment of the remaining useful life of bridges and their need to be replaced or rehabilitated. As part of this program CTDOT has determined that the bridges involved are reaching the end of their useful life and warrant rehabilitation. This rehabilitation is necessary at this time to avoid excessive deterioration of the structure and to ensure a long and reliable life for the bridges in the future.
>The CTDOT will utilize the Design-Build contract delivery method to decrease the time it takes to design and build the project. Accelerated Bridge Construction Techniques are also being utilized to reduce the time of construction and thus the impact of the project on road users and local citizens.
The accelerated technique being proposed is the use of prefabricated modular steel beam units that will be fabricated off site and installed rapidly during a short road closure. By using these techniques, the major portion of the project construction will be reduced from 2 years to one summer. The plan is to reduce the lane closure and stage construction periods that would impact the travel lanes on Route 8/25 from two years to two periods of approximately 14 days each.
*** They’ve been working on this site for quite a while now and it appears to be headed nowhere. The sooner this construction job is over, the better. ***
*** Highway to Hell! ***
This type of “efficient” (on-the-cheap) engineering makes me nervous. Moving those behemoths and placing/securing them properly at their designated positions would appear to be very, very risky. Full of hazards, pre-, peri-, and post-placement. Looks a lot like the type of lift-slab engineering that resulted in catastrophe at L’Ambiance Plaza.