King Bridge to reopen early
The Martin Luther King Bridge will reopen on Wednesday - two days early - and possibly by the evening commute.
“Stay tuned for the time,” Jeff Church, project engineer for the Illinois Department of Transportation told the Post-Dispatch today.
Workers were still placing the last of the concrete barriers and will stripe the traffic lanes before the bridge reopens. By finishing the work on Wednesday, the contractor Keeley & Sons Inc. of East St. Louis will earn a $100,000 bonus for completing the work ahead of schedule.
The bridge was closed temporarily so IDOT contractors could resurface part of the bridge and place the concrete barrier wall to prevent crossover accidents. When it reopens, the King Bridge will have three traffic lanes instead of the previous four. Two lanes will be eastbound. One will be westbound.
The work began on Oct. 12, and Church said the bridge closure caused some additional traffic congestion into St. Louis, but nothing much worse than what planners had expected. Commuters reported delays on the Poplar Street Bridge and streets leading to the Eads Bridge.
The weather, Church added, “wasn’t great” but the contractor was able to work through it.
Illinois transportation officials will provide an update on Wednesday, but Church said they would like to reopen the bridge to eastbound traffic in time for the evening commute. Motorists should tune back in to the Along for the Ride blog for the specific time the bridge will reopen.
Thank God!!! This has been a nightmare. Not ay to soon.
Please don’t open the bridge. We can’t afford to have people from the IL side coming to MO and robbing us blind.
I think you’re safe. There isn’t much to steal over there anyway. Can you tell your buddies to stop killing people and dumping the bodies on the IL side??
can’t we all just get along? Otherwise I flood both sides and you can both clean up the sh*t…
I second Da River’s comments- either you two start making nice or I will give him the ammunition for the flooding project, and they won’t even have to pay me $100,000 extra dollars to get it done quick! And don’t you think for a minute that I don’t have the marbles to do it guys- Just ask Noah!
He does trust me
“Downtown”
Actually, I take the Poplar to rob Missouri blind, not the MLK.
In all reality, you need the Illinois workers for Income Tax and City Commerce (which is bad as it is)
The Washington State Department of Transportation says critical work is moving quicker than anticipated.
The $500 million project is replacing pontoons on the older eastern half of the bridge that opened in 1961. The west side of the bridge was replaced after it sank in a 1979 windstorm. It reopened in 1982.