Bridge Moving

We returned home from our hike around 9:00 pm and were reminded of a momentous event happening right in our neighborhood. So, since Ellie was sleeping comfortably in her car seat, and neither Seth or I were particularly tired, we set out for another hike of sorts - this time with Ellie in her stroller.

I-80 runs about 4 blocks north of our house. At the moment, the state is renovating all of I-80s bridges in order to widen the highway to 4 lanes in both directions. This evening, construction crews happened to be moving the first of 4 sections of bridge into place. The bridge pieces were built on a "farm" a few blocks off site (and visible from our beloved park) in order to keep the interstate open as long as possible during construction. Something I heard, I think on the news, said this process - if successful - would shorten the closed highway time from upwards of a year to just over a week. The bridge that was being fixed this evening was only about 6 blocks west of us.

This is a new engineering process and happens to be the first experiment of its kind. So, National Geographic was out taping it along with several news channels. The first bridge piece was scheduled to be moved via Self Propelled Modular Transport sometime during this evening.

So, we set out from our house, through the park, and over to our local ShopKo parking lot. From there we were able to watch this huge piece of bridge move its way into place. It was amazing! I'm super glad we happened to be so lazy this particular Saturday morning and somewhat ridiculous in our decision to take a long walk at 10:30 at night!

Here's a short video Seth took of the movement: (sorry, it won't load at the moment)

And here are some fun facts about the bridge project:

• Combined, the seven bridge structures are 829 feet long and weigh more than 13.5 million pounds.
• If put end-to-end, the bridges would be nearly twice the height of Utah’s tallest building (the Well Fargo Center at 423 feet).
• The combined bridges weigh as much as 562 school buses or 270 backhoes.
• The bridge pieces move at approximately 3 miles per hour!