EVERETT – The new 41st Street bridge is big.
Six basketball courts could squeeze onto the unfinished structure that spans I-5 just outside of downtown Everett.
Instead of playing basketball on the 150-foot-by-197-foot pad that construction workers are getting ready to pour, the state will build a fancy new single-point intersection.
That means there will be only one traffic light in the middle of the bridge, speeding up the time it takes to cross and merge on and off I-5, said Mike Cotten, project director for the state Department of Transportation’s Everett I-5 widening project.
To make it work, the new ramps will come in at an angle, allowing everyone to meet in the center of the structure, he said.
The single-point design was selected by the city of Everett, which initially managed the project.
“It’s a much more compact design,” said Dave Davis, Everett’s director of engineering. “It can fit in the existing right of way.”
He said there simply wasn’t room for a traditional-style set of ramps, especially when the decision was made to add ramps from 41st Street to southbound I-5 and from northbound I-5 to 41st Street.
A rarity in bridge building, the new span is actually wider than it is long.
“It’s easily the widest bridge that I’ve ever built,” said Charlie McCoy, project director for Atkinson-CH2M Hill, the construction company building the bridge.
The state is on schedule to open the new bridge by Thanksgiving, just six months after the old 41st Street bridge was demolished.
“We just tore down the old bridge in April, and here we are talking about opening this huge bridge in November,” Cotten said. “That’s the power of design-build.”
The state is using a construction style that allows contractors to design the project as they go, which will make sure it gets built well before the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, B.C.
The new overpass is part of a $260 million effort to widen I-5 through north Everett. The widening is halfway done and is on schedule to finish in 2008.
Construction crews last week were busily preparing to pour a concrete pad on top of 25 82-ton girders that make up the structure that will hold up the 41st Street bridge.
It will take 600 cubic yards of cement to build that pad, said Jason Strevli, construction superintendent for the bridge project. The amount of concrete needed is so big that the pour will have to be done in three phases.
A giant tangle of rebar will hold the concrete together and tie into the girders, Strevli said.
When the bridge opens in November, it will include new ramps to the north – a ramp that puts 41st Street traffic on northbound I-5 and a ramp that allows southbound I-5 traffic to exit onto 41st Street.
Construction on the two new ramps to the south can’t start until after the new 41st Street bridge opens because the Cascade View bridge just to the south is in the way. That bridge is currently the detour for 41st Street, so it can’t be removed until the new 41st Street bridge opens.
The 41st Street bridge over Broadway will be done next year, McCoy said.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
