The remains of the old Sarah Mildred Long Bridge continue to evaporate as the replacement bridge seemingly grows larger every day.
The traffic on Market Street Extension on the Portsmouth side of the Piscataqua River has been rerouted at times this past week as workers add new roadway segments to pier one — the farthest inland pier. They’re working to build out the new vehicle roadway and meet the one built at a pier that stretches over a portion of Market Street Extension.
Ron Taylor, the Maine Department of Transportation resident engineer of the project, said it’s likely the vehicle span will be connected over Market Street Extension in the third week of January, depending on weather. The new bridge is expected to open to traffic in September 2017. Like its predecessor, it will connect Portsmouth and Kittery along the Route 1 Bypass.
Workers are staging at pier five, which is the first shared pier of vehicle and rail traffic to begin finishing the pier next week. Because of the complexity of the work, Taylor said the work to complete the pier would take about three weeks.
Three of the four new lift towers are also complete, with only a tower cap needed on each of those three. Workers continue to finish stacking the tower segments on the last lift tower.
The road deck of the old bridge has been removed, and the structure of the old bridge has been completely removed at many spots, leaving only the old piers. Taylor said there are four truss sections of the old bridge remaining — two on the Portsmouth side and two on the Kittery, Maine side — that workers are preparing to float out, likely beginning the second week in January, dependent on the weather.
“The cold makes things go slower and makes the work a little more complicated, but we’re dealing with it the best we can,” Taylor said.
Workers and subcontractors working for Cianbro Corp., the Maine-based general contractor hired to build the $158 million bridge, have completed 804 days with approximately 390,000 work hours without a reportable injury, Taylor said. As of Thursday morning, the construction of the new bridge remained on schedule and on budget, he said.
The new bridge is planned to be fully complete by June 2018. The roadway of the new bridge will be much higher than the roadway of the old Sarah Long, which closed permanently in August, several weeks earlier than planned, because of a bridge malfunction. Because the roadway is higher on the new bridge, the lift is expected to open two-thirds less often for marine traffic. The increased width between lift towers over the navigational channel is designed to make transit for larger ships safer. The bridge is co-owned by Maine and New Hampshire.
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