Mass DOT to replace bridge decks on I-93 in Medford...

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Mayor Menino's Crohn's

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http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news..._bridges_on_i-.html?p1=HP_Well_YourTown_links


State transportation officials unveiled a plan to the Medford City Council this week outlining the replacement of overpasses at seven major points along Interstate 93 north of Boston.

The project will include the installation of 14 new prefabricated spans, two at each of the seven points along the heavily trafficked artery.

Officials are planning to replace overpasses at Route 16, Mystic River, Riverside Avenue, Salem Street east- and west-bound, Webster Street, and Valley Street. Work is scheduled to take place over a series of weekends beginning June 1 and ending Sept. 1, said Matt Hopkinson, project manager, at a meeting of the Medford City Council.



Each span is scheduled to take a weekend to replace, with work on the roadways expected to begin each Friday evening after rush hour, Hopkinson said. If everything goes as planned, all lanes of travel will be reopened by 5 a.m. each Monday, he said.

The plans for replacing the spans come almost four months after two gaping holes broke open in the bridge over Valley Street on two consecutive days. Repairs snarled traffic and delayed commuters while construction crews scurried to fix the damage, caused by years of decay that had weakened the inner steel substructures.

Preparation work for the project is slated to begin as early as this winter and extend into the spring.

Construction techniques now allow workers to play a mammoth version of cut and paste: Using heavy machinery and cutting torches, workes will chisel their way through the overpasses at either end near where the roadway connects to the base structure, and replace the center section with prefabricated pieces that can be lowered in place by a crane.

The method should allow workers to spend one weekend on each overpass.

The $75 million project was originally funded by the state?s accelerated bridge replacement program, a multibillion dollar effort by state officials to bring Massachusett?s aging bridges up to date. But managers for the project said federal funding is expected to pick up about 80 percent of the projected cost.

State Department of Transportation officials have not finalized the order in which the overpasses will be worked on, but at the council meeting Tuesday, Hopkinson assured councilors that the agency?s planners have created heavy penalties for contractors who do not clear the roadways by 5 a.m. on Monday morning after work is finished at a particular site.

In its comments to state planners, the Medford council requested that as great an effort possible be made to reach out to residents who live near the sites, many of which are located in densely populated areas where the roadway can run just yards from homes and businesses.

To further allay fears of the delays experienced in August when emergency work was carried out, Hopkinson said a mobile command center, staffed with area police and fire personnel as well as officers from the State Police, will be installed close to the sites. The center will be connected to video feeds from traffic cameras that keep watch over the busy corridor, reported to carry more than 100,000 vehicles per day.

While crews work on a particular overpass, a specialized ?zipper truck? will move a flexible center barrier and reroute cars and trucks to the opposite side of the highway, Hopkinson said. Work will be suspended for the July Fourth holiday, he added.
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Next Summer? June 1 to September?

I thought this would already be going on by now.... my god...

I bet another massive bridge deck failure will occur by the time this starts up.
 
It may take that long to prefabricate all of the needed bridge spans.
 
When I was in 7th and 8th grade back in the early 1960's, I would often ride my bike over to Medford from North Cambridge, to see the original bridge and higway construction of I-93.

I became a civil engineer in large part because of that experience. It was an awesome project.
 
My father grew up in Medford in the 1950s and 60s and described to me the process of filling the Mystic to make way for I-93. He said that it involved a nonstop parade of train cars that went 24/7 with fill that were dumped into the basin off of Mystic Av. One of his great uncles owned a farm around the turn of the last century that was on Mystic Av, about where the VFW and Dodge dealership are today. That farm was was right on the river at the time.
 
Can someone give a little bit more detail as to what this means? Replacing the bridge decks does what?
 
It replaces bridge decks that are old and more likely to fail with bridge decks that are new and (hopefully) less likely to fail.
 
I do wonder why this is needed only in Medford, and not also in neighboring Somerville.
 
Ron Newman said:
I do wonder why this is needed only in Medford, and not also in neighboring Somerville.
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The section in Medford, to just south of where I-93 crosses over Route 16, is about 12 years older than the section in Somerville.
 
Anyone here who can confirm that in the early days of I-93, inbound lanes were shut down during rush hour?
 
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