Maumee River Crossing Construction to Proceed <br>Using More Simplified Truss System

February 23, 2005—Main-span assembly of the new I-280 bridge over the Maumee River in Ohio will begin this spring using three trusses, including one that will use components from a gantry crane previously banished from the project, reported the Toledo Blade in January.

 

The plan is intended to enable Fru-Con, the general contractor, to finish construction on time, in October, 2006, despite two accidents that have put main-span construction on hold for 11 months. The first accident, a Feb. 16 collapse of a horizontal truss crane, killed four construction workers and injured four more.

 

One of the trusses to be used will be a gantry crane similar in design to equipment being used to build ramp spans on the I-280 project and became available with the recent completion of a bridge project in Malaysia. Another is a custom-built "underslung" truss - not a crane at all, but rather a scaffold that will be hung between bridge piers to support precast span segments during assembly. But the third will be the truss portion of a crane identical to the one that crumpled to the ground last year during repositioning, and which was itself involved in a minor accident Oct. 23 during an attempt to resume construction.

 

The new plan, using the simplified crane and trusses and eliminating the self-launching system is a more traditional construction method. The self-launching system was developed to allow crane work, including repositioning, to occur without interrupting traffic on existing I-280, over which much of the bridge is being built. But state officials declared after the first crane accident that they would no longer allow such work to be done over traffic.

 

Read the full report by David Patch at the ToledoBlade.com.