Work wraps on Long Bridge deck
Traffic is flowing freely over the U.S. Highway 95 Long Bridge now that resurfacing work has been completed. —Photo by KEITH KINNAIRD
SANDPOINT — Resurfacing work on the U.S. Highway 95 Long Bridge is finally wrapped up, according to Idaho Transportation Department officials.
Cooler weather at the end of the summer and precipitation in October nearly threatened to delay completion of work on the bridge deck, but contractors encountered a patch of good weather on Oct. 28 and powered through to finish the work.
“It wasn’t looking good that we were going to be able to finish this season, but the sun decided it would give us one more day and we took it,” said Robert Cunningham, a project manager for ITD in Coeur d’Alene.
Painting below the bridge deck will continue and is scheduled to be completed this month. Underwater work on preserving piling that support the span is slated to be done next month. However, that work will not disturb traffic on the bridge.
“That shouldn’t have any effect at all on the traveling public,” Cunningham said of the work that remains ongoing.
Crews will also be repairing joints on the pedestrian bridge that parallels the Long Bridge, although Cunningham said it will not impede the flow of foot and bicycle traffic across the bridge.
Work on the vehicle bridge across Lake Pend Oreille — and its attendant traffic delays — frayed nerves during the high season in Sandpoint. Work slowed in late summer, when removal of an existing layer of protective epoxy caused grinding machinery to become gummed up.
“That took a little bit longer,” Cunningham said. “Ever since then, everything else has been weather related.” Cooler-than-anticipated weather this fall hampered the application of the new epoxy layer. In order for it to properly applied, ambient temperatures had to warm the deck to at least 55 degrees.
“So they weren’t getting started until late in the day, late in the morning,” said Cunningham.
The sheer volume of traffic that traverses the span also presented challenges.
In 2015, the bridge had an average daily traffic of about 20,500 vehicles per day, according to Ben Ward, a Panhandle region staff engineer for ITD. The data for 2016 aren’t in yet, but Ward said the extrapolated projection based on 2015 figures is 21,420 vehicles a day.