Repairs to Chesapeake Bay Bridge south span shifts to other parapet

Maryland Transportation Authority (MdTA) reopened the right lane of the southern span of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge late Sunday, and contrary to warnings of horrendous queueing and disruptions, holiday traffic was described as flowing better than normal.

The famous Olympic Games traffic scare effect was in evidence - if you say how horrendous it's going to be, it won't be too bad.

So great was the publicity of traffic tie-ups a lot of people who otherwise would have traveled stayed home or went elsewhere.  (Atlanta GA was said to have the best flowing traffic since the invention of the automobile during the Olympic Games there, thanks to traffic scaremongering by officials.)

MdTA is beefing up the parapets following discovery of corrosion in rebar and inverted U-bolts which hold the parapet sections to the edge of the deck. MdTA contractors are fitting the parapet with brackets (called connection plates in the picture) at the toe of the parapet as shown.

They are also bolting W-beam rail to the face of the parapet. The beam is intended to help by absorbing some of the energy of a collision and by helping hold the parapet together.

Having completed $3m of work on the south parapet the work shifts to the north parapet of the 1952 span's eastern approaches. Now there will be closure 24/7 of the adjacent northern lane of the old 2-lane span.

The troubled parapet was installed 1986-88.

The closures and repairs follow an early morning collision August 10 in which a westbound tractor-trailer in two way traffic was hit by an eastbound car and punched out a section of the south parapet, plunging into Chesapeake Bay.  The accident killed the tractor-trailer driver and heavily disrupted travel between the Washington-Baltimore area and the Eastern Shore of Maryland on two following days.

We are trying to get more detail on the parapet failure and the repairs.

TOLLROADSnews 2008-09-02