Delays likely near closed Indiana-Kentucky bridge

NEW ALBANY, Ind. — Highway officials are warning Thanksgiving weekend travelers to expect delays caused by the closure of the Sherman Minton Bridge that carries Interstate 64 over the river in Louisville, Ky.

Construction workers have completed patching work on the closed Ohio River bridge linking Indiana and Kentucky while waiting on shipments of steel needed to reinforce the span.

Crews have been installing platforms that will aid in attaching new steel to the closed bridge’s brittle, 1960s-era steel. They’ve also been spending as many as seven days a week making special cuts in the welded areas meant to prevent any future cracks from expanding, said Will Wingfield, an Indiana Department of Transportation spokesman.

“Until the steel arrives they’re doing what work can be done,” Wingfield told The Courier-Journal for a story Wednesday.

Wingfield said the delivery of the 2.4 million pounds of specialized steel needed for the strengthening work is expected in December.

Officials closed the nearly 50-year-old bridge in September after a crack was found in a steel support beam, leading to traffic delays as the some 80,000 vehicles that used the span each day were funneled onto the area’s two other Ohio River bridges.

State officials last month awarded a $13.9 million repair contact to Louisville-based Hall Contracting of Kentucky with a March 2 target date for completion.

Wingfield said the completed deck work isn’t directly related to the pending repairs but that the closure was a chance to get additional maintenance work done.

The reinforcing steel is being produced in the United States, and Wingfield said the material is scheduled to arrive sooner than under typical circumstances because the highway agency worked with structural engineers to select steel that can be acquired quickly from domestic mills.

“That’s a lot faster than what we typically see,” he said. But “at the end of the day, that still does take some time.”