U.S. 95 reopens early as installation of temporary bridge goes smoothly.
By MICHAEL SQUIRES 
REVIEW-JOURNAL 

It will take crews more than four months to demolish and rebuild the Valley View Boulevard bridge over U.S. Highway 95. It took a little more than six hours beginning late Saturday night to put in place the temporary bridge that will carry traffic on Valley View while that work is done.

Working under the white glow of halogen lamps, two cranes, so large they were each hauled to the site using 10 tractor-trailers, hoisted the temporary bridge's four sections into place.

It was the Nevada Department of Transportation's first attempt at using a temporary bridge as a construction bypass. Department officials said they were willing to try it in hopes it will diminish motorists' frustrations with the project and cut by about 15 days the time required to build the new bridge.

"When we looked at the amount of traffic in the area it made sense to look at the alternatives," said Tim Ruguleiski, the department's resident engineer on the project. "We're trying to be sensitive to the needs of the traveling public."

Widening U.S. 95 to 10 lanes between the Rainbow curve and the Spaghetti Bowl will require reconstruction of freeway interchanges at Decatur, Martin Luther King, Rainbow and Valley View boulevards and Rancho Drive on a route used by more than 180,000 vehicles a day.

State transportation departments around the country, similarly struggling to construct roads and bridges under congested conditions, have made temporary bridge bypasses the cutting edge for traffic managers.

"It's a new way of doing this kind of project," said Eugene Sobecki, a spokesman for Acrow Corp., the New Jersey company that manufactured the temporary bridge. "In populated areas like Vegas or metro New York, you just can't afford to close some busy roads."

The technology, however, is decidedly retro.

"Nobody in Las Vegas has seen a temporary bridge used like this before, but it's all very basic engineering," said Jim Witt, project manager for MMC Inc., the general contractor on the project. "There's not a whole lot unusual about it."

The technology dates to World War II, when British forces needed a way to replace bombed river crossings. Known as Bailey bridges, engineers designed components that could be transported and quickly assembled on-site in different configurations.

Speed was also an issue Saturday night.

The Transportation Department closed U.S. 95 at Valley View while the bridge was lifted into place. To assure the freeway would open by 11 a.m. Sunday, the department's contract with MMC included fines of $5,000 for every 15 minutes the freeway remained closed and $4,000 per hour Valley View remained closed beyond the deadline.

Witt said workers had carefully choreographed assembling the bridge beforehand to assure they would meet their deadline.

The two cranes alternated lifting the 210-foot spans in place so one end rested on a cement abutment above the freeway's shoulder and the other on pillars in the median. Once bolted in place, the 84-ton sections were joined end to end, creating two bridges, with each carrying two lanes of traffic.

Over the next few weeks crews will install aluminum decks that will serve as the roadway and pave approach routes to lead traffic from Valley View onto the bridge, which is scheduled to open Oct. 10.

With the structure in place by about 4 a.m. Sunday and the freeway open hours before the deadline, Transportation Department officials said so far they were pleased with their first attempt at using a temporary bridge bypass.

"It was an extremely successful launch," department spokesman Bob McKenzie said Sunday.