There’s a lot of hubbub surrounding the I-5 closure in Vancouver this weekend. Crews will close all lanes of I-5 in Salmon Creek at 11 p.m. Friday, June 7. The interstate will reopen to traffic by 5 a.m. Monday, June 10.

In the meantime…

Drivers are doing their prep work – making detour plans, downloading the WSDOT mobile app and planning for delays. We’re also preparing for this massive closure – here’s what it looks like in our world this morning. 

Line ‘em up!

Six of the 12 girders are lined up on the side of I-5, waiting to be hoisted into the air over the interstate. Crews are looking to make the most of every second that I-5 is closed. By staging girders on site ahead of time, they won’t waste any down-time between girders.

Bracing for impact…
It’s no small feat to close I-5 and detour tens of thousands of drivers. Our traffic control team has sorted and stacked traffic signs for the weekend and will put them all in place on the highways Friday night.

Ready for heavy lifting…

Crews are currently assembling the three, 500-ton cranes that will be doing all the heavy lifting this weekend. The size of the crane gives a little perspective to the scale of this weekend’s undertaking. Each girder is 175,000 lbs. – it will take three of these monster cranes to install them.

Fill ‘er up!

This one should be self-explanatory. It’s going to be a long weekend, and we’re in it with you.

Plan for delays if you’re traveling through Vancouver this weekend, and make sure to visit the project website to find more information about the closure location and detour routes. Good luck, all – we’ll see you on the other side!

By guest blogger Heidi Sause

When Allen Hendy told me our contractor was going to shut down I-5 for a girder setting, I looked at him like he was out of his mind and let loose a dignified: Excuzemewhat?!

Allen is the project manager for the Salmon Creek Interchange project. For nearly three years now, his team and our partners at Clark County Public Works have been overhauling local roads and the I-5/I-205 junction in Salmon Creek. We’re on the last (and most exciting!) phase of construction – building a new interchange at NE 139th Street to reduce traffic congestion and improve safety in the busy area.

But here’s the pinch. We’re setting girders – essentially piecing together the bridge’s backbone – and there are a dozen girders that need to be hoisted into place directly above I-5. The installation process will close I-5 from 11 p.m. Friday June 7, to 5 a.m. Monday, June 10. Here’s a look at the span where we’ll be working:

 

Unlike many girder settings, this location isn’t level. I-5 is higher than the surrounding ground, which means the cranes essentially have to park downhill – below the launch spot of the girders and far below the installation target on top of the bridge piers. This less-than-ideal setup limits the cranes’ lifting power.

To address this complication, crews will park a third crane on southbound I-5 to assist with a complicated pick-and-switch-and-lift process to install the girders. Imaging a track relay, but with a 165-foot concrete and steel baton, and three cranes instead of runners. It will be one of the most complicated and difficult settings we’ve ever done, and it will take up to three hours to install each girder.

All that to say: the only way to complete this task is with a full closure of I-5. (I get it now, Allen!) We’re working to coordinate detour routes, identify potential “trouble spots” where traffic is more likely to back up and find ways to maintain access for local traffic and emergency vehicles. But no matter what we do, the closure will have a ripple effect on traffic in the entire area and there’s a huge potential for traffic headaches – even nightmares.

Here’s how drivers can help avoid traffic nightmares:

• Don’t drive if you don’t have to.
• If you have to drive through Clark County during the weekend of June 7-10, then visit our website to figure out if your route will be impacted.
• Familiarize yourself with the detour routes. (Pro tip: I-205 is your best friend.)
• Expect traffic congestion and plan for delays – give yourself some extra time to reach your destination.
• And as always, use the WSDOT tools at your disposal to know before you go! Visit our travel alerts page, call 511 and download the WSDOT app to access real-time traffic info during the closure.

Crane operators lift the 120-foot girder into place on the future NE 139th Street Interchange.

 By guest blogger Heidi Sause

It’s been a big week on the Salmon Creek Interchange Project. I’m talking high-flying, heavy-lifting, milestone-reaching BIG.

Now, I’m a hyper-enthusiastic transportation geek who’s prone to hyperbole even before reaching for my morning coffee – so you can imagine my delight when a 120-foot long concrete girder took flight on Tuesday.

Don’t get too excited (that’s my job); the flight was scheduled and carefully controlled by two masterful crane operators. But it was still a sight to see. Why? Because girder setting is one of the coolest things we do; it’s the point of construction when years of planning and engineering finally take shape in the field, and a reminder that we’re several 120-foot steps closer to a future with less traffic congestion in the busy Salmon Creek area.

The girders crews are placing right now form the backbone of the new Northeast 139th Street interchange, which will eventually carry drivers over the I-5/I-205 junction in the Salmon Creek neighborhood of northern Vancouver, Wash.

This week, our contractor installed 18 girders on the interchange bridge. They have another 16 scheduled for installation next week, which will bring the installed-girder tally up to 34. Thirty four down, 99 to go.  (Ninety-nine girders to place on the bridge, ninety-nine girders to place…)

When complete, the interchange will significantly alleviate some of the gridlock on Northeast 134th Street, the parallel road that runs just south of current construction work. The new interchange also gives drivers another option to access the interstates, and provides direct access to Legacy Salmon Creek Hospital and the Washington State University Vancouver campus (go Cougs!). 

We’re in the fourth and final stage of the $133 million congestion relief project, and on track to wrap things up in 2014. In the meantime, crews are in a frenzy of orchestrated activity: drilling bridge shafts, pouring concrete, realigning roads and – as enthusiastically mentioned – setting girders. 

Sign up for project email updates and check out our Flickr site to follow the interchange during the upcoming construction season – it’s going to be a doozy.

Crews secure a girder section that will support the new westbound SR 522 Snohomish River Bridge.

By guest blogger
Meghan Pembroke

Widening SR 522 between the Snohomish River Bridge and US 2 in Monroe is a massive undertaking with a lot of moving parts. All along a four-mile stretch of SR 522, crews are blasting rock, building bridges, digging ponds, constructing walls and hauling out dirt to make way for two new lanes. And that’s not all. In the next year, before construction wraps up in 2014, they’ll also build a new roundabout, a noise wall and a wildlife undercrossing.

The most herculean undertaking of all is the creation of a new 1,700-foot-long Snohomish River Bridge that will carry westbound SR 522 across the river. Crews reached a major milestone last week – though daily drivers might have missed it entirely. Well below the sight of drivers on the existing highway, behemoth girders arrive daily, one by one. Crews are working steadily to piece together the new bridge, one girder at a time.

The first of 49 steel girders arrived Nov. 1, after an overland journey that began in Libby, MT, at Stinger Welding. The last leg of its journey took it up I-5 and east on US 2 to the SR 522 interchange, where it picked up a WSP escort. Each of the next 48 girders will make a similar journey to their final destination above the Snohomish River.
   
But getting the girders to the project site isn’t as simple as it seems. Once the trucks arrive at the existing bridge, crews have to get the girders down the steep embankment to the work area below the bridge. The solution: A temporary off-ramp. Crews took out a section of guardrail and on a rainy Tuesday night, built a temporary ramp from westbound SR 522 to the ground-level work area. They covered it with steel plates to keep the truck tires from sinking in and give the big semis some extra traction. Using brief overnight rolling slowdowns, the girders roll down the ramp and are unloaded before the trucks head back out on Tester Road.

Crews are using an army of cranes to set the first batch of girders this fall. Each assembled girder ranges in length from 150 to 305 feet and weighs between 30,000 and 55,000 pounds – and those are the small ones. The smaller girders will form the backbone of the eastern end of the bridge – primarily over land – on the north side of the river.

But the real action will come next spring, when the massive, river-spanning girders arrive on scene. These girders will be even longer and heavier than the girders we’re setting now. Crews will use huge steel rollers to launch the girders up, out and over the river, where crews will secure them between piers in the river.

Even though drivers might not see a difference as they pass by the project area each day, these girders are good news. It means that we’re one step closer to opening two new lanes of SR 522 by fall 2014. Crews pushed hard this summer to complete the piers during a limited in-water work window. Their efforts meant the girder setting – what’s known as “critical path work” in WSDOT lingo – could start right on schedule. 

If you’re a westbound passenger, you might be able to catch a glimpse of the new bridge coming together as you approach the Snohomish River. For the rest of you, we’ve updated our Flickr set with photos of the work.

By guest blogger
Abbi Russell

Sometimes it’s not an activity itself that’s exciting, but the resulting ripple effect that brings a sense of anticipation and purpose.

Night time girder setting advances SR 14 project, keeps traffic impacts in Washougal to a minimum.

Take, for instance, this week’s girder setting on State Route 14 in Washougal. Crews placed nine girders over Second Street Monday and Tuesday nights, essentially putting into place the backbone of a new bridge that will carry the highway up and over the cross street. Exciting, eh? Eh?

If you’re a transportation geek like me (and any number of people around here), this is great news. If you’re a driver passing by every day, it means things look a little different. Now there are some grey concrete bars connecting two grey concrete walls. Yay.

Girder setting may seem like a mundane milestone, but it’s an exciting one for us because it shows that things are moving forward. It shows that a project we and the community have been planning and laboring on for at least 10 years is actually coming to fruition.

Pretty soon, those grey concrete bars will support a bridge deck. And not long after that, the deck will support cars. Eventually, SR 14 will be a smooth-sailing, four-lane highway from I-5 to Washougal, bringing safer, faster trips to local drivers, tourists, and commerce. That’s a vision that’s been a long time coming – decades, in fact.

But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. Crews still have a ton of work to do before we can open a wider SR 14 and two new interchanges to traffic. We plan to be finished late this year or early next year, and until then, we’ll keep celebrating each step that gets us there.