Despite the ongoing investigation into the October accident on the new I-10 Twin Span Bridge over Lake Pontchartrain, crews are moving forward with construction. 

WWL-TV

Photo of construction of new Twin Spans from earlier this year.

Crews broke ground in 2006, but the 803-million-dollar project was suspended for four days after the accident last month. Project Manager John Horn says they aren't behind.

"To finish the whole project we're looking at mid-to-late 2011, which is on schedule. Everything's still on schedule," he said.

Hurricanes Gustav and Ike set them back a couple of weeks, but they caught up quickly after some damages.

"We had two of the girders for the long spans, 135-foot spans, blew off of the caps into the lake," Horn said.  "Those had to be replaced with new girders."

Those girders, which were located closer to the south shore, were much like the one that fell into the lake in last month's accident. Horn says heavy winds during the hurricanes were the culprit. 

"Yeah, we were surprised at it, because we had them braced because we knew that potential existed; and it actually broke the bracing and fell in the lake,"  Horn said. "We probably had some localized, really high winds that were a lot higher than we were expecting."

Since our last update in January, the decks on the northern end of the bridge were finished and all of the piles were driven for much of the project. Crews still have to drive piles for the westbound approaches, which will be among the final tasks to finish. Piles also need to be driven on the eastbound navigational channel, which is only thirty percent complete right now.

Around this time next year traffic coming from New Orleans will be using the new Twin Span Bridge to get to Slidell.

By mid-to-late next year westbound I-10 traffic will switch over to the existing eastbound span, while Slidell-bound commuters travel on the new spans. Eastbound traffic will enter the new eastbound bridge, immediately cross over to the new westbound section, then after passing the highrise, cross back over to exit off the eastbound span. Crews will be working on the middle eastbound section at that time.

In phase two, westbound traffic will move off the old structure onto the new westbound bridge. However, both directions of traffic will still have to get on and off the new bridge on the eastbound approaches. The westbound ones will be last to to up since they'll be built over the old bridge.

By 2011 the entire twin span will be ready, with three twelve-foot travel lanes in each direction and two full shoulders.  Horn says he's proud to be involved in such a big project in the recovery.  "Proud to be re-connecting the interstate system here. Dollar-wise, it's the biggest project I've ever been involved with. It's the biggest project the Louisiana Department of Transportation's ever been involved with."

Mike Sasser, a spokesman for Volkert, says there has been a great deal of interest in the new Twin Span Bridge, not only regionally, but nationally.

"It's been the subject of uh, a couple of different features with national cable television networks; there's been a team of dutch engineers that toured the project site on one occasion; a team of engineers from Asia that came in to take a look at the construction," says Sasser. "It is something of an engineering marvel, as far as, it connects the interstate system here in the southeastern United States and it's part of the recovery of the region from Hurricane Katrina."