Tag: galenacreekbridge

The RGJ has an article on the construction of the Galena Creek Bridge, along the freeway between Carson and Reno. It looks like after a couple of years of stalling, work on the center span is finally beginning.

You can follow the construction via webcam at http://factory.oxblue.com/client/galena/.

I went to Reno this weekend, and snapped this photo of the Galena Creek Bridge. They've started on the bridge deck here at the south end. Still have a long road ahead of them, though.

Photo by RickC at Flickr

Construction on the I-580 freeway between Reno and Washoe Valley is marching on again, after a break of a year or so while a new contractor was found for the project. If you drive 395 up to Reno, you can see a lot of work going on in the hills above Pleasant Valley, as they cut into the hillside for the new roadway. But of course the most striking part of the project is the Galena Creek Bridge they're building to the west of Pleasant Valley.

Rick from washoevalley.org went on a tour of the construction site last week, and put up several pictures on Flickr of the bridge construction. I used one of them at the head of the article; you can find the others by following these links: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7.

The Nevada Appeal also wrote three articles on the project this weekend. They must have taken the tour too.

I-580 project a beehive of activity
Freeway's Galena bridge draws most of criticism
Residents, businesses see freeway extension as mixed blessing

That Galena Creek Bridge is nothing but trouble. First the original contractor backed out because there was no safe way to build the thing in the high winds we get in the area. Now there's a new contractor, and their plan is to fill the canyon in with dirt first so they can build the bridge just a few feet off the ground. Then, when everything is done, the dirt would be removed and the ravine restored.

So the bridge is going to take forever, but it's good to see that they're working on the roadbed for the new freeway now. I've been back and forth to Reno a few times in the last couple of weeks, and you can see where they've started to cut into the hillside above Pleasant Valley. Soon a new six-lane freeway will be taking shape up there, although it's still going to be years and years and years before it's open.

I thought technology was supposed to make work like this go faster, not slower?

Construction is starting back up again on the I-580 freeway! This long-fabled project, the missing gap between the Reno and Carson City freeways, has been slowly coming together over the last few years in the hills south of Reno. But work stopped in May of 2006 over concerns by the contractor that the freeway's centerpiece, the 300-foot-high Galena Creek Bridge, couldn't be built safely. Kind of makes you wonder why they started building it in the first place. Maybe they didn't know what the winds are like around here, which means they didn't talk to anyone or spend a day in the Washoe Valley before they took the job.

So the unfinished bridge pillars have been sitting there ever since then, all alone and forgotten.

But after scrambling for most of the year, NDOT found a new contractor to finish the job, Fisher Sand & Gravel from North Dakota. Yesterday was their first day of work on the project, and while they're just moving equipment in and getting their offices set up right now, they hope to get out there and start building soon. The bridge itself will be built by a subcontractor, C.C. Meyers or California, the same company that built the new Lake Natoma Crossing bridge in Folsom. They seem confident that they can get the whole freeway finished, and they've given themselves 1,000 working days to do it. Which is a nice round number, but that still comes out to four years, or roughly 2011 before any traffic actually drives on the road.

You can watch progress on the bridge via the official webcam, which has been dutifully running and capturing images even though no work has been taking place on the site since last spring. And the project as a whole has a website at www.freewayextension.com, where you can keep up with the latest news.

Of course, it didn't have to be this way. I've heard there were several possible ways they could have routed the freeway through the mountains, and NDOT chose this particular alignment mostly because they were excited about the chance to build this bridge. You see, when it's finished the Galena Creek Bridge is going to be the longest concrete span in the world, or something like that, and will bring a lot of engineering prestige to Northern Nevada. So even though the freeway could have built cheaper and faster with a smaller bridge in a different location, NDOT decided to go big, and now we're all paying the price. Hopefully the bridge is worth it.