Hurricane Bridge Now Open to Two Way Traffic, Ribbon Cutting Set for Tuesday

Hurricane Bridge is now open to two way traffic and a ribbon cutting will be held Tuesday morning, August 20.
According to Jennifer Flynn, Tennessee Department of Transportation Community Relations Officer, TDOT Commissioner John Schroer will be having the ribbon cutting at 10:00 a.m.
“The project is not totally complete, but the bridge has been reopened to two lanes, so we’ll be celebrating a major milestone in the project,” said Flynn
The ribbon cutting will be held on the north end of the project with parking on the shoulder.
“That bridge was built during World War II and it had some pretty lite structural members,” said Paul Degges, TDOT Chief Engineer in a previous interview with WJLE. ” One of the things we went through on the project was to make sure it can handle traffic for the next fifty years or so. We went in and looked at every single member of the truss. Some of those metal components underneath the deck are in tension and some are in compression. So we did an analysis on all those to make sure that we replaced the ones that needed to be replaced,” said Degges.
“This is an older bridge. It has a lite weight construction so we used a lite weight concrete on it. The concrete deck on this bridge weighs about twenty percent less than concrete we use in typical applications,” he said.
“I think motorists will also notice that the bridge rail looks a little different. It’s metal instead of concrete. It’s just as strong but it’s a little bit lighter than concrete,” said Degges.
“We took about two feet off the shoulders. While we still have the same width twelve foot travel lanes, the shoulders are now a little bit narrower than they were before the project. What we wanted to do was to be able to put this bridge back in service and get another fifty years out of it,” he added.
In October, 2010 TDOT awarded the bid on the Hurricane Bridge Rehabilitation to OCCI Incorporated at $26.9 million. The contractor had until October 31st, 2013 to complete the project. Modjeski and Masters has been the consulting firm.