Crews prepare for massive bridge move over I-215
BY JANET ZIMMERMAN STAFF WRITER March 26, 2014; 03:00 PM
Ironworkers are tightening the last of 98,000 bolts on a massive railroad bridge, and riggers are putting the final touches on a complex plan for moving the steel span into place over Interstate 215 next week.
Commuters have witnessed the rusty metal structure taking shape for the past several months as workers assembled it alongside the freeway at Barton Road in Grand Terrace, not far from the BNSF railroad bridge it will replace.
Finally, beginning April 2, the span will be moved and positioned above the freeway by the same company that transported the space shuttle Endeavour across Los Angeles in 2012. Three more bridge sections will be built and wrestled into place in the coming weeks.
Consider, though, that the shuttle weighed 150,000 pounds, whereas each bridge section weighs 1.1 million pounds. Luckily, the spans will travel less than a mile down a closed freeway, not 12 miles through a city like the Endeavour did, said Manny Yogarajah, the Caltrans engineer heading the move.
The four-day routine will be repeated through April 25, when the fourth span is installed. Two more spans will be set this summer.
By the time work is completed at the end of this year, three new railroad bridges will replace a double-track BNSF span that crosses the freeway now between Iowa Avenue and Barton Road. Two will replace the existing bridge and the third will be available for future expansion, Yogarajah said.
The work avoids a long stoppage of rail traffic through the area, which totals at least 80 trains a day, Caltrans spokeswoman Michelle Profant said.
A BNSF spokeswoman did not return a phone calls seeking comment.
The $17 million in bridge improvements is part of a larger, $170 million project to add a carpool lane in each direction along a 7.5-mile stretch of Interstate 215 from north of Orange Show Road in San Bernardino to just south of the Highway 60/91/215 interchange.