King Bridge closure on schedule
All systems are go for the 12-day closure of the Martin Luther King Bridge to begin on Monday.
The bridge will close in the eastbound direction between 6:30 a.m. and 7 a.m. Monday, while the westbound lanes will close after the morning rush-hour, said Jeff Church, project engineer for the Illinois Department of Transportation.
IDOT is closing the bridge between Monday and Oct. 24 to convert the four-lane roadway into a three-lane driving surface with widere lanes. The $1.4 million project will permanently eliminate one of the westbound traffic lanes and feature a concrete barrier to separate eastbound traffic from westbound.
The work follows a state-ordered safety assessment earlier this year. There had been 10 fatal accidents on or near the King Bridge in Illinois since 1998, resulting in 14 deaths. Two of those accidents occurred in December.
The work is weather-dependent, Church said.
During the King Bridge closure, the Missouri Department of Transportation will operate the reversible lanes of Interstate 70 in the westbound direction during the morning commute. The reversible lanes will switch to the eastbound direction in the afternoon and evening hours.
This week’s rain also forced IDOT to cancel one day of bridge inspections that had closed eastbound lanes during off-peak times this week. Eastbound lanes will be closed on Saturday, but that work should be finished by 4 p.m., Church said.
This really couldn’t wait until 64 opens back up?
“widere lanes” or “wider lanes”
Why couldn’t they make the middle lane reversible to ease congestion during rush hour? This is going to kill the commute for thousands of people. I know safety is a huge issue on the bridge and something had to be done, but this is going to be rough until the new bridge opens in a few years.
IDOT is missing the second I in their acronym.
Agreed ,this should wait until 64 is done, or better yet, not be done at all. Not a very bright resolution to a problem.
IDiOT Really doesn’t care. The bridge has been like it is for as long as I remember and they didn’t care until they got FED money to burn. How do you spend 1.4M on some concrete?
Who makes these decisions??? And based on what criteria?? 10 fatal accidents in 10 years doesn’t seem like an exceptionally high number - especially compared to the number of cars that travel on this bridge. I’d like to see the stats - how many of these fatal accidents occurred during rush hour? I would guess that most were after the bars close. This is just poor planning and all of us commuters are the ones that will have to pay the price.
I have the strangest feeling that the people with IDOT knows a lot more about what needed to be done than those “Pros” whe spend most of their day making comments while on line.
This will back traffic to the Interstate every morning. With this one move, IDOT will reverse many years of good progress that IDOT has made in smoothing the commute over the bridge spans. This screwup will never go away - it is permenent. Congrats IDOT - your favorability went from pretty green to very red with this action. You really couldn’t wait? ~~~***~~~ IDOT - answer this - have there been any fatalities since the new signage? I think not. Isn’t that evidence that the signage was enough? This is overboard. ~~~***~~~ At least ban the westbound 18-wheelers and trash trucks from 7:00am to 8:30 am - they can really clog the traffic lanes, and now there will be no way around them.
Close the MLK down for good. We don’t need people from that side of the river coming into St. Louis.