Bridging The Gap

As some of you might know a 23 mile section of I-15 in Utah is under construction. With widening the interstate Utah must replace several of their bridges along the section. On Saturday night Cassidy and Randi had the opportunity to go and watch them move the Sam White Bridge into place. We knew this was a blog worthy event when UDOT (Utah Department of Transportation) workers came around taking pictures of the crowd for their facebook page.

So Cassidy and Randi stood outside in the cold and rain from 11 pm to 1 am to watch them move the bridge off the original supports.

Here are some cool little tidbits about the bridge and how it is moved.
-The bridge weights 3.82 million pounds-It is 354 feet long and 80 feet wide (the longest two span bridge ever moved in the western hemisphere).
-It took 12,700 hours to build and move the bridge into place.

-It was moved by a Self Propelled Modular Transporter (SPMT) that uses hydraulic rams to hoist the bridge 21 feet off the ground.
-The SPMT has over 200 tires and is ran by a single joist stick.

We both had a good time watching the wonders of modern engineering at work, even though it was cold and rainy.

Here is the finished project.