SHINE – The mega-project that is due to end before 2010 with a new Hood Canal Bridge eastern half has reached the halfway point, Department of Transportation officials said this week.
The project contractor, Kiewit-General Construction, placed the 10th bridge anchor on the sea floor, and crews in Tacoma completed 80 percent of second-phase pontoon construction out of four phases.
These milestones are moving the project closer to the May-June 2009 bridge closure and east-half replacement date, said Theresa Gren, Hood Canal Bridge project communications manager.
A temporary passenger ferry will be used to take passengers across Hood Canal while the 2009 east-half replacement project is under way.
Components for the aging eastern half, which opened with the original floating bridge in 1961, are being built at five Puget Sound-area locations because the state scrapped the graving yard on the Port Angeles waterfront in late 2004.
That 23-acre onshore dry dock was envisioned to construct floating bridge components for the Hood Canal Bridge and the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge – all in one location on Port Angeles Harbor.
That project cancellation – caused by the discovery of more than 300 Native American burials and thousands of artifacts from the 2,700-year-old Klallam village of Tse-whit-zen – delayed the bridge’s east-half replacement by more than two years.
The western half, built in the early 1980s to replace a sunken portion caused by a 1979 winter storm, has already been widened and renovated to await the new eastern half.
Upcoming construction highlights, listed by Gren, are:
The total of 20 anchors will eventually be cabled to the floating bridge pontoons to keep them in place.
Eight of the 14 new pontoons will have been constructed by then.
This span, which will allow the bridge to be opened for passing submarine traffic, will eliminate the highway bulge that is now in the center of the bridge.
The drawspan construction is expected to be done by October.
