Weather postpones move of RTD’s 6th Ave. bridge

Lingering wet weather forced RTD to delay bridge's placement across the highway.

LAKEWOOD – Sloppy spring weather that raises the risk for light rail workers and motorists forced a delay in the rollout of the light rail bridge across 6th Avenue and the accompanying  shutdown of a heavily traveled stretch of the highway.

The rollout, originally scheduled for this weekend by the Regional Transportation District, will be delayed for at least a week, a FasTracks spokeswoman said Friday.

West Corridor light rail project construction officials are concerned that the expected weather conditions would jeopardize the safety of workers as well as that of the public and could adversely affect “the precision necessary to successfully complete this activity,” according to FasTracks spokeswoman Kathy Berumen.

“We want our crews to focus on the details of this complicated operation not the weather,” said Jim Starling, RTD’s West Corridor Project Manager. “Postponing the transport for one week is a much better alternative for ensuring a successful bridge placement.”

RTD still plans to make the snail’s pace placement of the bridge a spectator event.

The huge span will be wheeled from its fabrication site south of the highway next Saturday morning, and grandstands will be in place at the nearby Lakewood Fordland parking lot so the public can watch the slow-motion haul first-hand. The grandstands will be immediately north and just west of the gap that the new bridge will span.

But Berumen warned that the rescheduled move could again be delayed, depending on Colorado’s undependable spring weather.

“It’s going to be like watching paint dry. They’re going to be there eight hours watching it move three feet,” quipped Kevin Flynn, who recently ceased publication of his Inside Lane, an Internet site that covered traffic and transit issues and events in Colorado.

Actually, the bridge will move somewhat faster, up to 25 feet per hour, a journey that will take an estimated 30 hours to reach its destination, according to the transit agency. It will be moved via two eight-axle, 35-foot transport platforms.

But the traffic impacts of the roll-out are no joking matter: All lanes of West 6th Avenue will shut down between Kipling Street and the Simms/Union exits for the entire weekend, from Friday evening until Monday morning, according to the memo. Major congestion can be expected along the detours – Kipling north to West Colfax Avenue then west to Simms and south back to West 6th for westbound traffic; and Union Boulevard south to West Alameda Avenue, then Kipling north to the highway for eastbound traffic.

Folks headed to or from the mountains and foothills can take Interstate 70 westbound to avoid the detours.

Despite the expected traffic tangles, RTD’ choice of bridge rollout dates is the best that could be expected, Flynn said.

“The closing of the freeway, I’m wondering how people are going to react to that,” Flynn said. “They (RTD) tried to pick a weekend that was ‘the least worst’ alternative for it,” Flynn said. “They chose the timing to come after the close of most of the ski resorts.”

The bridge was fabricated according to a timetable reached by working backward from that “least-worst’ choice of weekends, Flynn said.

The bridge “launch”, as the memo calls it, might be a slow haul, but the sight should be impressive. The bridge is 286 feet long, 43 feet wide and is 65 feet tall from crown to base. Its structural steel components weigh a total of 1.2 million pounds. The high-strength steel is “weathered”, turning brown as a “protective oxide coating” forms, eliminating the need for painting according to a fact sheet distributed with the FastTracks memo.

The bridge is a “clear span” design with no center pier in the freeway median to hold up the span. Instead 44 cables strung from the arch to the base provide support with an estimated breaking strength of 688,000 pounds. There are 1,950 feet of 23/8-inch cable criss-crossing the bridge.

The clear-span design will be wide enough from side pier to side pier to allow future widening of the freeway, the Simms-Union interchange ramps that pass beneath the bridge and the frontage road on the north side of West 6th Avenue.