Ironton-Russell Bridge hits delay
Published 11:41 am Wednesday, May 14, 2014
The wait for the long-awaited Ironton-Russell Bridge will be a little longer.
“It is ostensibly the weather,” Kathleen Fuller, public information officer for Ohio Department of Transportation, District 9, said. “You miss a day, it’s like missing two or three days.”
Originally the eight-pier cable-span bridge was scheduled to open in November 2015. Now that date has been changed to at least April 2016.
Also uncertain is whether $81.3 million price tag will hold.
“We will have change orders,” she said. “It won’t have a drastic cost effect. (Final cost) is too early to tell.”
Right now five of the eight piers are finished. The tower on the Kentucky side should be completed by the end of fall while the Ohio tower is expected to be finished early next year.
“We hit a lot of milestones when we were supposed to,” Fuller said. “All the substructures are finished. Once you get out of the water, it goes quicker. But that doesn’t mean we will catch up.”