240/Sooner Bridges

[bombermwc]

I haven't had a chance to get any pictures or anything but the demo team has made quick work of tearing out the southbound side bridge. It's totally gone now. All traffic is crammed on to the northbound side.

I'm actually surprised that the traffic hasn't really been all that bad. COVID has so many people staying at home, that the traffic has been lighter anyway. And now that Sunnylane is done, there's plenty of room to go that way to avoid Sooner's new bottleneck.

They had the rebar pillars on-site before they even started demo, so i'm hoping that's a sign that the bridge will start going on fairly quickly. It's always faster to demo than build, but I can hope.

I'm not sure if they are going to need to rip out the existing bridge footings on the approaches. If so, then there's quite a bit of demo left to go. And if they plan on making a single structure, then yeah still more demo and i'm curious how that's going to work to build in phases. Makes the most sense to me to make 2 new 3-lane bridges and hopefully not just putting 2 2-lane bridges back. That 3rd land would go a long way to getting the turn lane traffic where it needs to be instead of clogging up the through lanes.

[WitWhy]

any plans floating around showing what they're doing?

[rte66man]

any plans floating around showing what they're doing?

According to ODOT's 8 Year Plan
https://www.odot.org/cwp-8-year-plan...ionokc_map.pdf

It is a "Rehabilitation. Given it is only budgeted for $3.4 million, it is likely they will use the existing piers.

[bombermwc]

Nope. they ended up ripping those suckers out.

3.4 seems low for a bridge???

[bombermwc]

I believe they poured the first portion of the southbound bridge over the Thanksgiving break. They were actually working Thanksgiving morning!

Best i can tell, they are NOT building two separate bridges but will connect the two sections as one larger bridge (thankfully). That will give the turn lanes the right amount of room they need for the volume of traffic that goes across them and backs-up the through traffic. You can see this by noting that the barrier only exists on the outside section and not the middle...or at least that's my assumption based on that. Still a long way to go before traffic shifts over. The weather challenges over the last month or so have really put a damper on how fast this thing is moving.

[BoulderSooner]

new ODOT 8 year plan came out last week .. (only a month late)

2024 is the Sooner road bridge rehab ...

I-240 UNDER SH 77H (SOONER ROAD)
JP# 2710704 FFY 2024 BRIDGE REHABILITATION $ 3,412,000

[bombermwc]

2024 huh, even though they're already halfway through it. That's interesting....lol

[Snowman]

new ODOT 8 year plan came out last week .. (only a month late)

2024 is the Sooner road bridge rehab ...

I-240 UNDER SH 77H (SOONER ROAD)
JP# 2710704 FFY 2024 BRIDGE REHABILITATION $ 3,412,000

It had been on the site for at least that month, though I think the way their recent site update was done reverted a lot of page's content back and may have overwhelmed their staff who manage the site with corrections to do. The current version had to be found kind of indirectly since the main links to find it were still pointing to the old version, even though other links elsewhere on the site were pointing to the newer version.

[Plutonic Panda]

I am NOT a fan of the new website.

[Buffalo Bill]

I am NOT a fan of the new website.

$15M of Oklahoma’s Cares Act funding at work.

[bombermwc]

Looks as though they are super close to being able to open the new bridge up. They have the barrier wall up on the one side and have been working on all the art embellishments on the pillars/dirt walls/etc. Hoping we'll get to move over there soon so they can start on side #2.

[bombermwc]

New bridge is open and just like that, the east section is gone. That was a fast tear down.

There will apparently be more road work done on the approaches after all is said and done though, because there's some very obvious temporary asphalt that's been hastily thrown down to make it an interesting up and down. The bridge itself is smoooooth though. No more crumbling sides that make you wonder if this thing is going to hold....

[bombermwc]

Project completed this weekend with repaving the approaches and striping. They have clean up to do off the road, but the flow is clear!

Hopefully they do a street clean so all the crap that piled up against the sidewalks, gets cleared off.

They also, like always, have the lights jacked up so you get a green on the first, just to be met with a red as soon as you approach the second no matter the direction you come from.

I'm moving in a few weeks (building a new home) so thankfull i wont have to deal with that any longer. But at least I got a few weeks on the new completed bridge! LOL I got some reward for a year of it totally sucking! HAHAHA

[Plutonic Panda]

^^^ did they make it wide enough for an eventual widening to six lanes?

[bombermwc]

No, but with it being a single slab, the center turn lane now goes the length of the bridge. So it will help get that traffic out of the way for the through folks. With the old two-bridge method, they could only get over after crossing and pile up with the little micro turn lane section. That part has already been a massive improvement with how many cars can properly fit on that side of the intersection at one time.

Now if they would only fix the lights. I have zero faith since I've been working with the city for 10 years on it and they still can't get it right.