CDOT Completes Two Major Projects/Castlewood Canyon Bridge Honored

CDOT recently celebrated the early completion of two major highway projects on Colorado's Western Slope.

CDOT Marks Completion of S.H. 82 and U.S. 50 Projects

The Colorado Department of Transportation celebrated in October The early completion of work on SH 82 in Snowmass Canyon, the seventh and final phase of reconstruction and widening from Basalt to Buttermilk.

The $100.2 million, 14-mile corridor project was the 13th of Colorado's 28 Strategic Transportation Projects to finish.

CDOT officials, state and local legislators, community members and highway construction crews also marked the completion in October of the 12th Strategic Transportation Project - the reconstruction on U.S. Highway 50 between Delta and Grand Junction.

The project finished eight years ahead of its originally scheduled completion date of 2012. The total corridor cost is $78.5 million, $12 million less than the original TRANS bonding cost of $90.5 million.

Castlewood Canyon Bridge Project Wins PCA Award

Franktown's Castlewood Canyon Historic Bridge is one of nine winners of the Portland Cement Association's 2004 Ninth Biennial Bridge Awards, instituted in 1988 to recognize excellence in design and construction of concrete bridges in Canada and the United States.

Castlewood Canyon Bridge was a complex rehabilitation project that involved a 1948 concrete arch with 14 spans - 11 of which are supported on top of two parallel arches spanning 232 ft, 6 in. Water leaking through the joints at the ends of each span was the main cause of the deterioration of the arches.

Due to environmental limitations on accessing the canyon floor, most of the construction was accomplished with the help of hanging work platforms and a crane set on top of the structure. The arches were preserved by repairing them with carbon fiber wraps and shotcrete.

The removal and reconstruction of the superstructure had to follow a certain sequence to avoid overloading the supporting arches.

The superstructure was replaced mostly with precast columns and pier caps and precast, prestressed slab girders. Special "joggle bars" in the column pedestals were used as dowels to miss the existing reinforcing bars in the arches. The precast elements were tied together with NMB splice connections to reduce the required development length for the rebars.

Project principals were the Colorado Department of Transportation, owner; CDOT Bridge Branch and Regional Office 1, engineers; CDOT, architect; Kiewit Western Co., contractor; Lafarge North America and Owens Brothers Concrete, concrete suppliers; and Plum Creek Structures, precaster.

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