SoylentNews

Taking a page from Elon Musk's SpaceX construction project in Boca Chica (Texas), the state of Maine's largest city (Portland) will be using SPMTs (Self-Propelled Mobile Transports) this coming weekend.

It all starts at 7 PM (EDT) on Friday April 22 and continuing through 11 AM on Monday April 25, 2022. "It" is the replacement of a bridge on one of the busiest roads in the state: I-295. The whole highway will be closed, the existing overpass will be demolished, the rubble will be removed, and the previously-constructed replacement overpass will take a ride on the SPMTs to its new home... and you can watch it all happen on-line!

The $20.8 million project has a web site: https://verandaplan.org/ Linking to active content on their site is non-trivial, but try: https://verandaplan.org/livestream. Here's a short YouTube video of the bridge being moved in preparation for the actual "moving day".

The time has come: Veranda Street bridge project starts this week:

The state's rapid-fire demolition and replacement of an aging highway overpass in Portland will close Veranda Street starting Monday and a busy stretch of highway for more than three days starting Friday.

Construction giant Cianbro has 64 hours to tear down and rebuild the I-295 bridge over Veranda Street. The 60-year-old bridge is past its useful life and deteriorating. It is classified as structurally deficient. The replacement costs $20.8 million.

Working on a razor-thin timeline, workers will destroy the existing bridge, remove the rubble, then use huge self-propelled transporters to lift a prefabricated bridge deck into the old span’s place.

Veranda Street will close to motor vehicle, pedestrian and bicycle traffic on Monday. The street has to close so the transporters, loaded with the new deck, can get into place and take practice runs, Merrill said.

Then Friday night, the real work begins. Shortly after the highway closes, multiple construction vehicles equipped with hoe rams – basically huge jackhammers – will start tearing the old bridge apart. “The demolition is going to be extremely loud and extremely disruptive,” Merrill said.

After the rubble is removed, the transporters will move two bridge sections – each 80 feet long, 47 feet wide and weighing 400 tons – into place. Transporters move up to 3 miles per hour fully loaded and need to lift the bridge plates 8 feet in the air to get into place. The entire operation is expected to take about six hours, Merrill said.

The replacement should be finished and the highway reopened to traffic by mid-morning on April 25. There is no indication the schedule will change, Merrill added. Cianbro’s contract has financial incentives to finish on time or faster and financial penalties if it misses the deadline.