Crews Bring Down Final Bridge Section

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The final section of the old Milton-Madison Bridge has been blasted into the Ohio River. Indiana Department of Transportation and Kentucky Transportation Cabinet crews took down the 600-foot span Thursday morning. Work is underway to upgrade the original peers to support the new bridge, which will be double the width of the former structure. September 19, 2013

News Release

MILTON, Ken. and MADISON, Ind. – With threatening weather moving in, the final 600-foot section of the 84-year-old Milton-Madison Bridge was demolished slightly ahead of schedule this morning.

The old bridge came down at 8:30 a.m., about a half hour ahead of the scheduled 9:00 a.m. blast. The new bridge – which is currently sitting on temporary piers immediately downstream from where the old bridge stood – reopened to traffic at about 9:45 a.m.

The truss will be retrieved from the river, dismantled and sold for scrap.

Now that the entire 2,427-foot-long truss has been removed, work will begin on widening the original piers, which are being rehabilitated and reused. Pier caps will be added to the original piers to accommodate the new 40-foot-wide bridge. The old bridge was just 20 feet wide. The final step comes later this year, when the new bridge will be slid onto the renovated original piers in what is believed to be the longest bridge slide ever to occur in North America.

The Milton-Madison Bridge Project – a joint effort between the Indiana Department of Transportation and the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet – has received numerous awards. It was named one of the top 10 bridge projects in the country by Roads and Bridges Magazine, received a 2012 Best of What's New Award from Popular Science magazine and received several state and national engineering awards for innovation. For more information, visit www.MiltonMadisonBridge.com or follow the project on Twitter.

Source: The Milton-Madison Bridge Project