PORT ANGELES — Completely closing one Eighth Street bridge at a time will reduce the construction time frame from 56 weeks per bridge to 24 weeks, city officials said Wednesday night.
About 25 people attended an open house Wednesday night at City Hall on the $20 million replacement project of the seventysomething trestles over Valley and Tumwater creeks.
Closing one bridge at a time — rather than build part of a new bridge while keeping a lane of an old bridge open — will save money and be safer for workers and drivers as well as shorten construction time, the staff officials said.
The City Council will decide the bridge closure issue at a June 7 meeting, said project manager Bernie Chaplin from Exeltech Consulting of Olympia.
That meeting will include a presentation, summary of the open house and interview comments, and more cost investigation, he said.
The City Council has already decided on a slant-leg bridge design, and to make each span out of steel rather than concrete.
Final design will be completed this summer and the project will go out to bid in the fall.
Huge project
City officials and Exeltech engineers have conducted interviews and open houses during the past two years to get public comments on the project, which will be one of the largest in the city’s history.
City officials originally had planned to keep one lane open across both bridges at all times during the construction project, based upon comments from fire and police officials.
But concerns about cost and safety, and the inconvenience and uncertainty of repeated short-term closures caused Exeltech engineers to recommend closing one bridge at a time and building the new one.
