Wednesday, June 05, 2013

The bridge slider

Bridge slider? Huh…? Yes. He slides bridges and we might see he technique used on the replacement for the failed bridge on I-5 in Mt Vernon, Washington.

Murray Johnson has a novel technique for replacing bridges. To replace an old bridge with a new one in the exact same location requires closing the crossing for months to years. Sometimes you can put the new bridge in a new location and keep the old one in service to minimize the disruption. But you usually prefer the existing location. Murray puts the new replacement bridge in the same location with a minimal disruption of like ten days or less. He builds the new bridge next to the old one, then demolishes the old one, then slides the new one in place.

"Extreme bridge engineering" - it is his term, not mine!

Wall Street Journal

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