Coming this winter: More room to maneuver on Lewiston’s Clearwater Memorial Bridge

Two crew members calmly drilled holes for rebar for a new section of the Clearwater Memorial Bridge in Lewiston on a recent weekday amid strong gusts of wind.

They worked tethered to a bucket truck elevated about 20 feet above the Clearwater River, where whitecaps were ripping through the water.

The laborers are part of a rotating group of about 30 skilled trades people who have endured scalding heat and bone-chilling cold to keep the first rebuild of the nearly 75-year-old bridge on schedule.

The two-lane eastern span of the bridge that will eventually be dedicated to northbound traffic is done, said George Elliott, an engineer at ITD, who’s the project manager for the bridge reconstruction.

The majority of the work on the rest of the bridge is anticipated to be complete on time this January by crews overseen by Wadsworth Brothers Construction of Draper, Utah.

That will allow drivers to use all four lanes of the bridge, instead of being limited to a single southbound and northbound lane as they have been since October of last year on the heavily traveled route.

The 21,000 vehicles on the bridge each day include trucks carrying chips and sawdust to Clearwater Paper and logs to Idaho Forest Group as well as cars driven by commuters heading to and from jobs outside the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley.

“It’s just really amazing to see history in the making, for this bridge to be retrofitted,” said Mark Pfeifer, a spokesperson for the Idaho Transportation Department at Lewiston.

Construction on the bridge originally started in 1949 and it opened in 1951. Its designers expected it to last three quarters of a century, a goal it met, Elliott said.

Significant portions of the bridge are still so sturdy that after careful analysis, ITD chose to strengthen them and incorporate them into the new bridge, an approach that shaved about two years off the construction schedule and saved millions of dollars, he said.

Those sections include the piles that anchor the bridge in the river bed and the columns or piers that support parts of the bridge like the decking.

Between upgrading parts of the bridge and replacing components such as the pier caps, spans, decking and abutments in the ground that support the bridge on its north and south side, the bridge will function better, Elliott said.

Everyone using the bridge will have more room to maneuver because of the $38.2 million, 18-month project being completed with federal funds on the bridge that’s a part of U.S. Highway 12.

Each of the four lanes will be 12 feet wide, a foot wider than they were previously. Sidewalks on the north and south side will be 6 feet wide — also an increase of 1 foot.

But one of the biggest changes will be widening the shoulders that had previously been just a foot wide. They will be 6 feet wide, much closer to the width of sedans, pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles.

“Disabled vehicles really didn’t have anywhere to go if they stalled on the bridge,” Elliott said.

That situation can create a domino effect where traffic can be slowed until the vehicle blocking part of the road is removed, he said.

The weight limits for vehicles will be higher and more in line with modern standards once the rebuild is finished, Elliott said.

At this stage, some truckers are carrying loads so heavy they bypass the Clearwater Bridge, take Down River Road on the north side of the Clearwater River then cross the Snake River on Red Wolf Bridge west of Clarkston, he said.

Completing the job and keeping the bridge open for vehicle and pedestrian traffic has been a complicated process.

Before the east side of the bridge was complete, a shuttle service that could be summoned 24 hours a day was available for pedestrians.

Using the river to transport supplies has helped minimize traffic congestion on the bridge during construction, Elliott said.

Materials like steel and concrete have been trucked or barged to a staging site at the Port of Lewiston. Then they have been loaded onto the barge with a crane — one that is more than 100 feet tall and was brought to the area for the project — and the barge ferries them to the bridge.

Another crane at the bridge then unloads the materials. That crane has also lifted the parts of the bridge that are being dismantled and puts them on a barge to take them to land to be hauled away.

A third crane has completed jobs such as driving in pilings for the abutments in the ground on the north and south sides of the bridge.

The work the crews have completed is anticipated to last for another 75 years, Pfeifer said.

“Anytime you do a bridge construction project like this, there’s a little bit of inconvenience with the construction itself, but I think it will be a huge improvement when it’s done and people will be happy with it,” Elliott said.

Williams may be contacted at ewilliam@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2261.