New I-70 Bridge Opening Later This Month
Date Posted: December 10, 2024
Posted In: News, Projects,
From Columbia Missourian: Explosions rang out over the Missouri River in September 2023 when the old Rocheport bridge on I-70 was demolished. Fifteen months later, the new I-70 bridge in Columbia is nearly ready for traffic. The bridge is scheduled to fully open to the public later this month, with a ribbon ceremony set for Tuesday.
The ceremony was scheduled to accommodate Gov. Mike Parson’s availability, allowing him to commemorate the near-opening of the second of two new bridges, this one serving eastbound I-70 traffic.
If all goes as scheduled, the completion will mean the Missouri Department of Transportation will meet its goal of having both bridges open by the end of 2024 while remaining within the $220 million budget.
The crossing over the Missouri River carries anywhere between 30,000 and 50,000 cars per day, so a strong bridge is required.
The project was announced and entered the planning stages in 2019, as the steel structure for the previous Rocheport bridge neared the end of its projected life.
The old bridge, which opened in 1960, had already undergone a roughly $30 million rehabilitation in 1993, which was meant to buy it another 10 to 15 years of life. After that, it was time for something new.
Instead of the single, four-lane bridge that had previously crossed the Missouri River, the new project involved construction of two bridges, one eastbound and one westbound, each capable of carrying three lanes of traffic.