Date:  Thursday, November 19, 2009

Contact:
Rumina Suafoa, WSDOT Project Engineer, 253-534-3100
Karri Workman, WSDOT Communications, 360-704-3270

TACOMA – Both directions of SR 509 will close early Saturday morning between downtown Tacoma and Port of Tacoma Road while crews remove eight 140-foot-long, 113-ton girders from the fire-damaged Puyallup River Bridge.

A signed detour will reroute drivers to I-705, I-5 and Port of Tacoma Road during the closure, from 2 a.m. until 9 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 21.

“This is a big operation,” said Kevin Dayton, WSDOT Olympic Region administrator. “The roadway needs to be closed to accommodate equipment on the bridge.”

Dayton said windy weather could postpone the work.

Two 250-ton cranes will be staged on the bridge to lift the giant girders – each weighing as much as a blue whale – onto flat bed tractor-trailers. Removal of each girder is expected to take about two hours. Bridge girders sit atop bridge columns, linking the columns and supporting the roadway.

Crews are repairing damage to the bridge sustained in a December 2002 rail-car fire. The blaze damaged two bridge columns and a total of 15 girders. To keep traffic moving, crews are repairing one half of the damaged span at a time, reducing a one-mile stretch of the four-lane bridge between Tacoma and Fife to two lanes with one lane of traffic in each direction. The speed limit through the construction zone drops to 35 mph. The project started in October and is scheduled to be complete in June 2010.

This section of SR 509 carries an average of 32,000 trips a day.

Additional weekend closures of SR 509 between I-705 and Port of Tacoma Road will be necessary as the project progresses. To reduce the traffic impacts for commuters and commercial traffic, the closures will be scheduled on weekends.

WSDOT awarded the $2.9 million repair contract to Granite Construction Company of Everett, Wash., in June 2009. Funding comes from a settlement with Burlington Northern Santa Fe and federal bridge replacement funds.

For more information and Flickr photos/videos of the fire, visit the project web page at www.wsdot.wa.gov/projects/sr509/puyallupriverbridge/.

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