Photo courtesy of the Michigan DOT
Construction on a $160 million bridge and road improvement project in Calhoun County, Mich., will pick back up in spring with work scheduled for four bridges, as well as repaving work.
Construction on a $160 million bridge and road improvement project in Calhoun County, Mich., will pick back up in spring with work scheduled for four bridges, as well as repaving work. The I-94 project began in October 2022 and includes rebuilding nine bridges and replacing eight.
Photo courtesy of the Michigan DOT
"The existing I-94 bridges at 6 1/2 Mile Road, M-294 [Beadle Lake Road], 9 Mile Road and the Kalamazoo River were built in the late 1950s," said Nick Schirripa, spokesman of Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT). "At more than 65 years old, they had reached the end of their service life. The existing I-94 pavement from Helmer Road to 17 Mile Road consisted of sections of pavement that were last resurfaced in the mid- to late-2000s and needed preventive maintenance resurfacing. A lot of our bridges are aging, not just state bridges, but other bridges in our inventory. We maintain them as long as we can and stretch those tax investments as long as we can, but we don't stretch it so far that we're putting public safety in jeopardy."
The project didn't go exactly as planned in 2023, but rather in an odd twist it actually went better. Plans for the Capital Avenue Interchange rebuild originally called for partial-width construction allowing limited traffic over the bridge during the construction.
"We wanted to make sure from the perspective of it being the centerpiece that we were making the best decisions we could," Schirripa said. "We wanted it to be the best product in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of traffic interruption. We originally had that slated for six-month build. We would have kept two lanes open, rebuilt the other half, three-four months in, moved traffic, rebuilt the other half, linked them and opened it to traffic."
But then joint venture contractors CA Hull Inc. and Anlaan Corporation suggested they could do the work in less than half the time by shutting down the bridge for 75 days and offering detours. MDOT took the proposal to the public and area schools and won their approval. A second part of the project called for another eight-week closure of the I-94 ramps for repaving.
"Three weeks before they were to finish, they said, ‘If we can get seven more days, we can do it all right now,'" Schirripa said. "So, we went from 180 days to build the bridge to 75; and on the ramps, we went from another eight weeks to two weeks. The ultimate cost was extending the closure of the bridge from 75 to 82 days. By shutting down completely and not having to contend with live traffic, we could just move faster."
Photo courtesy of the Michigan DOT
Contractors also finished all westbound bridges in 2023 and will take on the eastbound bridges in the coming year. Three of the bridges call for what Schirripa calls "a bridge in a bag," or temporary steel bridges. Each of the bridges are actually two bridges, one for westbound traffic and one for eastbound traffic with a gap between the two. Normally during construction, MDOT would shift lanes from one bridge to share lanes on the bridge in the opposite direction. But in this case, the bridges — 6 ½ Mile Road, 9 Mile Road and M-294/Helmer Road — are too narrow to accommodate four lanes of traffic.
"Instead of pinching it to one lane in each direction, we use the temporary bridge to keep two lanes in each direction," Schirripa said.
Work on the bridge project is expected to be completed in the fall of 2024, with a paving project still to come for a rest area in 2025 that will not impact traffic. CEG
Lori Tobias
Lori Tobias is a journalist of more years than she cares to count, most recently as a staff writer for The Oregonian and previously as a columnist and features writer for the Rocky Mountain News. She is the author of the memoir, Storm Beat - A Journalist Reports from the Oregon Coast, and the novel Wander, winner of the Nancy Pearl Literary Award in 2017. She has freelanced for numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Denver Post, Alaska Airlines in-flight, Natural Home, Spotlight Germany, Vegetarian Times and the Miami Herald. She is an avid reader, enjoys kayaking, traveling and exploring the Oregon Coast where she lives with her husband Chan and rescue pups, Gus and Lily.
Read more from Lori Tobias here.
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