Update on I-44 Meramec Bridge Replacement

We often receive inquiries on the progress of the construction project to replace and add bridges on Interstate 44 over the Meramec River. Andrew Gates, Communications Specialist with the Missouri Department of Transportation, sent us the following update on Monday, July 22, 2019:

We wanted to give you a heads up on some of the work coming up for the Meramec River Bridge project. Although Meramec River flooding didn’t impact the roadways, it did slow down a good deal of construction in the river for the new westbound bridge.
 
This week, we will be pouring a portion of the westbound bridge deck. To do that, we will be closing an additional lane on westbound I-44 between I-270 and the Soccer Park Road exit Tuesday (July 23, 2019) at 8 p.m. The lane closure will help us bring a steady flow of concrete trucks in for the work. We’ll reopen the lane by 2 p.m. Wednesday.
 
Later in the week, we are set to close the Soccer Park Road exit overnight to complete some concrete work at the exit. We will be closing the exit at midnight on Friday, and plan to have it reopened before noon on Saturday.
 
We have some interstate closures coming up to help complete work on the Watson Road bridge during the first two weekends of August. Right now, we plan to have a full closure of I-44 on the first weekend so crews can place the girders for the new bridge, and set panels over the eastbound lanes. The following weekend, we will have a full closure of the westbound lanes to set panels over those lanes. The detours will be similar to the ones set when we demolished the Watson Road bridge. We’ll share more on both these weekend closures when we get closer.
 
For the rest of this month, we will continue to work on the new westbound main line pavement and hope to have the remaining work at the North Outer Road and Soccer Park Road completed. We will also start the work to put down the new temporary pavement for an upcoming traffic shift of westbound traffic.
 
We move the traffic into the temporary traffic shift in August, and continue to work on new westbound mainline pavement east and west of the Meramec River. That work will continue into September. We anticipate completing the new westbound Watson Bridge in October and hope to be able to move eastbound traffic onto the new westbound I-44 bridge in November.

Everything is, of course, weather dependent.

For more details on the project, visit https://www.modot.org/i-44-meramec-river-bridge-replacement

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