The Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) recently announced it selected Walsh Design-Build Team, consisting of Walsh Construction and CH2M, in October to replace I-480 Valley View Bridge.
The project is projected to cost $228 million and will include a deck replacement, two additional lanes in each direction, lighting, drainage, connecting the new bridge to the existing highway system, and traffic control.
The 40-year-old twin bridge crosses the Cuyahoga River Valley in Cuyahoga County and is one of the state’s busiest bridges with 170,000 vehicles daily.
“The plan is to design and construct a new four-lane structure between the existing Valley View bridges,” Shawn Thompson, CH2M design project manager, said. “Since maintaining the same volume of traffic on I-480 during construction is very important at this location, the Walsh DBT has developed a plan to erect new structural steel members and construct tall pier units with virtually no impact to the existing eight lanes of traffic currently in use. This new structure will allow us to re-deck the existing bridge decks in phases and eliminate traffic backups and delays that would occur if we closed an entire half of the bridge.”
CH2M has worked on more than 50 similar projects, including the I-71/I-670 Columbus Crossroads project.