Although work in and around Interstate 70 in the Wheeling, W.V., area will continue into this fall, all 26 bridges in a massive $215 million bridge replacement and rehabilitation project are either completely or partially open to traffic, the West Virginia Division of Highways (DOH) announced in late December.
Work on the project, funded through Gov. Jim Justice's $2.8 billion Roads to Prosperity highway construction and maintenance program, began in 2019. The project entails repairing or replacing bridges, entrance and exit ramps and highway work in and around Wheeling.
Major bridge work undertaken in the project included repairs, a deck overlay and painting of the Fort Henry Bridge; repairs, deck overlay and painting of the Main Street Bridge; completely new decks for the eastbound and westbound East Tunnel Bridge; complete demolition and replacement of the eastbound and westbound Fulton Bridge, and deck overlays or replacements on four bridges in the Elm Grove area.
The complex project has seen construction work from the Ohio River to Elm Grove Exit 5.
Each Bridge Presented Its Own Challenges
More than two years into the state's most complex road construction project to date and with several months still to go, DOH District 6 Engineer Tony Clark told the Intelligencer newspaper in Wheeling that he has laid awake some nights worrying about replacing or repairing each of the interstate bridges in the stretch of just a few miles.
"Each [bridge] had their challenges," Clark told the local news source from his office in Moundsville, W.V. "But I keep coming back to the Fulton bridges."
He pointed out that just the Fulton section of the multi-million I-70 Bridge Project involved eight bridges, four of which were replaced from the ground up since 2020.
And, while he noted drivers would consider the remaining four sections to be on and off ramps, Clark explained that they are really bridges in terms of construction — driving surfaces that suspend in tight curls over, in this case, other driving surfaces.
Those tight space, which made the construction of temporary crossover lanes impossible, was only part of the problem when the project started. The other factor was the 1950s-era pier supports under the full-on bridge sections, he said. While the original piers, since replaced, were massive, they connected to the two-lane bridges above by only two points each.
That now-outmoded style of construction meant that it was physically impossible to replace one lane at a time, Clark said. Rather, the entire westbound bridge had to come down at once and leading DOH engineers to reroute through traffic to the I-470 bypass and city traffic along National Road.
And that, Clark acknowledged to the Intelligencer, was only the practice run.
What really alarmed him was how it would play out when the eastbound lanes had to be shuttered in January 2021, making access to WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital from any point west of the Wheeling Tunnel difficult. It was a snarl that the sudden closure of downtown's Ohio Valley Medical Center and the emergence of a pandemic further complicated, he added.
But the contract was awarded, and bridges were already coming down.
"Once that train started running, we couldn't stop it," he said.
Ironically, he said re-opening those eastbound lanes when the Fulton part of the project was completed in summer 2021 became his second biggest worry. Traffic began flowing while, in Elm Grove, other project construction had I-70 merging onto the I-470 bypass.
It soon became clear that amped-up signage, in addition to the large-scale GPS mapping that has been accomplished throughout the project, would be needed to prevent accidents, he noted.
"Traffic engineering is like doing anything else," Clark said of adjusting to the ever-changing project. "All the simulations may say it's going to be correct, but, at the end of the day, it's hard to factor in what drivers are going to do, [and] how they're going to react."
Such issues, not to mention quirks like the motorist who, in the wee hours of one morning, managed to drive the wrong way through the closed westbound tunnel and crash into a new section of bridge (without serious injury), are part of any project this large, Clark told the Intelligencer.
I-70 Bridge Project is W.V.'s Costliest
"At the time [in 2019] the I-70 Bridge Project was billed at the largest contract that the state had ever put out," he added, noting the only road work that could rival it financially was a Charleston area project that turned a two-lane road into a four-lane highway. "As far as complexity of work, we've got [that one] beat. It's a small project in terms of footprint, but there's a [lot going on]."
By mid-December 2021, the DOH's I-70 Bridge Project had paid out $195 million, with 89 percent of the work being complete. While there have been several change orders of the kind Clark said might be anticipated for such a large project, the construction remains on budget.
In terms of scale, Clark did a recent tally to calculate the size of the bridge construction. Two figures particularly caught his eye: One, it has taken more than 30,000 cu. yds. of concrete coated with white waterproofing material when it is upright or mixed with life-extending materials on driving surfaces; and two, that concrete is reinforced with some 7 million lbs. of rebar.
In fact, the concrete need has been so great, he said that Swank Construction Co., based in New Kensington, Pa., and the project's prime contractor, opted to take the unusual step of making the material locally to keep costs down.
The number of people involved also is staggering, he added. Swank itself has about 100 crew members on the project. Two of the larger subcontractors working on painting and concrete repairs have similar numbers of employees.
DOH also has a fleet of consultants that have been brought in to handle the temporary flood of bridge inspections that would have otherwise overwhelmed the state agency's permanent staff, Clark said.
He noted some of the workers have been nearly invisible to drivers as they are tucked between the underside of bridges and suspended on floors made of corrugated steel.
"We had to do that, or you could have gotten debris falling on cars or businesses and doing a lot of damage that, basically, is preventable."
Project Completion Slated for Next Fall
As has been the case the last two winters, the project is now in a slower phase that will maintain current traffic patterns through the season, the Intelligencer reported.
Clark said, though, that drivers need to remember the I-70 Bridge Project won't be over for what is anticipated to be another nine months or so.
What remains to be performed is deck work on bridges near Elm Grove and Middle Creek, DOH recently announced. Work also continues west of the Wheeling Tunnel.
"There's still going to be lane closures, there's still going to be a lot of work," Clark said, adding that through traffic would be better served using I-470.
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