Sunday Poll: Rate The New Mississippi River Bridge
Years in the making, one year ago today Illinois & Missouri cut the ribbon on a new bridge over the Mississippi River at downtown St. Louis, officially named the Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge. The name, like everything about the project, is a compromise between interests in each state.
For budget reasons the bridge has fewer lanes than originally desired, in downtown it feeds into Tucker rather than a West bypass loop. Now that a year has past I’d like you to rate the overall bridge project. How did Illinois & Missouri do?
The exact question is: Rate the new Mississippi River Bridge (aka The Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge) based on your overall impression.
The 1-5 rating scale will be presented in random order, the poll is in the right sidebar on the desktop layout. The Sunday Poll closes at 8pm — 12 hours from now. Note: your feelings for the late Stan Musial shouldn’t be a factor in your rating of this major infrastructure project.
— Steve Patterson
From a distance, it’s a nice addition to the skyline; up close, it’s pretty apparent that “value engineering” played a big role in the project.
I’m wary when so-called “value” engineering is recommended to bring a proposed project into budget. I’ve found that for every buck “saved”, $0.25 frequently goes toward the contractor’s bottom line, and often (at least sometimes) the owner is left with a maintenance nightmare. I question the use of so much exposed structural steel in the new ballpark project, for example, and whether that selection was the result of “value” engineering. And while I’ve not driven your new bridge, based on your comment, I suspect that along with those changes, the owner may be facing some maintenance nightmares as a result. I’ve found also that frequently these so-called “value” engineering details are “negotiated” and are not subject to competitive bidding. YIKES.
The biggest value engineering is that full interchanges with existing interstate highways were eliminated on both ends – headed west, you can continue west on I-70, but you can’t go south on I-44 thru downtown in the depressed section. Similarly, headed east, you can continue east on I-70 and I-64, or north on I-55, but you can’t head south/west back to the Poplar Street Bridge or get to the exits into East St. Louis.
http://www.kmov.com/news/local/More-repairs-made-on-surface-of-Stan-Musial-bridge-261671851.html
http://www.kmov.com/news/editors-pick/MoDOT-closing-section-Stan-Musial-Bridge-for-repairs-274180551.html
RE: Your first link: Expansion joints tend to be “the clap” of the industry, whether they’re used on a bridge or on a PARKING GARAGE structure, and should never be considered fail-proof or maintenance free. (or leak-proof!) But they’re a necessary evil.
RE: Your second link: I’ve never met a 2″ topping slab, used in a potential freeze-thaw environment on a structure that is designed to flex, that I’ve ever liked. But I’m always open to new introductions.
Best bridge $220million can buy I guess (that’s the cost of the main span) and it has moved 40,000 cars from other bridges. So money well spent
They forgot the bike lane! I love the free views at Eads and McKinley. It’s hard to appreciate the bridge and skyline at 60 mph.
I like bike lines on bridges, but what would a bike lane on an Interstate bridge have connected to? I think we are somewhat luckily to have Eads, McKinley and the Old Chain of Rocks.
The span of the bridge is great. The problem is that it will need an additional 2-4 lanes in the near future. It should also connect with I-44.
I don’t think it’s likely we will need another 2-4 lanes in the near future. Traffic projections are not increasing as they once were.
Steve, have you heard/read anything recently about traffic counts on the new bridge? Last I heard was that they were quite a bit lower than projections, but that was some time ago.