Crews with Max J. Kuney Construction are putting the finishing touches on one of the largest bridges in the Spokane, Wash., area — an integral piece of the $91 million Spokane River Crossing and the first bridge to be built in the area in nearly 50 years.

"They are pre-stress, post-tension girders that span roughly 200 feet in each direction across the river," said Ryan Overton, eastern region communications manager for the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT). "I'd say some of the most impressive parts of it are the girders are hammerhead-style girders, varying in length. The hammerhead-style girder basically rests in the middle of the pier column.

"And then we add a drop sector on either side of the hammerhead and then post-tensioned steel through the structure itself to gain strength, and that is what makes this structure really impressive. It's a pretty incredible structure."

The prestressed WF83G girders range from 110 ft. to 146 ft., with the post-tensioned section consisting of 5 girder segments ranging from 98 ft. to 128 ft., with an overall length of 538.5 ft. The largest span from pier to pier in the post-tensioned section is 230 ft.

"We also have two steel structures that were built on the ground and lifted into place," Overton said. "The bow truss is 213 feet, and the box truss is 116 feet. The two steel structures are for the pedestrian bridge."

The Spokane River Crossing is part of the $1.5 billion North Spokane Corridor project, first conceived in 1946 with groundbreaking for the first project of the 10.5-mi. stretch in 2001. About 70 percent of the "alternate north-south corridor" is finished, with completion scheduled for late 2030 or early 2031.

The river crossing project is taking place largely on undeveloped land on railroad easements, making both traffic management and material deliveries fairly easy, Overton said. The main challenge comes from the work in the Spokane River.

"On this, we've had to build a temporary structure, kind of a work utility bridge across the Spokane River for equipment to stage on top of," he said. "We are under environmental requirements that our windows are roughly June 1 through Nov. 1 to be working in the water. That has always been a challenge to limit those work windows for being in the water but, outside of that, once we get outside those windows and the structure has gone up out of the river, challenge-wise, it's just been keeping the material on schedule."

The next project on the list of dozens is Stage 3 of Sprague to Spokane River, which will see the construction of a new segment between Sprague Avenue and Alki Avenue and connect the Interstate 90 connection project to the North Spokane Corridor Stage 2 project. Work on that, also under contract with Max J. Kuney Construction, began this fall.

"It is a raised structure from Sprague Avenue to Alki Avenue," Overton said. "We are building a new raised section of the freeway, and it has parallel bridges. On the east side will be the northbound lanes of traffic and, on the west side, the southbound lanes."

Crews have already completed some major projects, including one calling for a crane so tall, they needed FAA approval because of the proximity to Felts Field, a municipal airport on the south bank of the river.

The final major project on the horizon is scheduled to start in 2027.

"That will be an immense amount of work," Overton said. "There are going to be traffic impacts to I-90 pretty regularly throughout the Hamilton Interchange all the way to the Sprague Avenue Interchange. There are sections that we will be slightly widening I-90. There's going to be bridge work that will be happening, lane reductions. We're going to be flying girders over the top of I-90 ramps. That project specifically that we will be breaking into three projects will have an immense amount of work from 2027 through late through the early 2030s."

When complete, the North Spokane Corridor will connect to U.S. 395 at Wandermere and U.S. 2 to the north and connect to I-90 near the Freya/Thor interchange to the south, creating a 60 mph, 10.5-mi.-long north/south limited access facility.

Travel time between Wandermere and I-90 will be shortened to approximately 12 minutes.

"The Spokane River Crossing project and North Spokane Corridor as a whole is a project decades in the making and, once complete, the freight and traffic that is on city streets will be placed onto the state system — the future U.S. 395," Overton said.

"By doing so, this opens up opportunity to reimagine Division Street in Spokane. It also creates opportunity for growth and development in NE Spokane and has already revitalized the Hillyard neighborhood. The corridor is about opportunity, and crossing the Spokane River symbolizes that by bridging the gap and shows that we're one step closer to connecting and completing the North Spokane Corridor.

Cranes used on the Spokane River Crossing Project include:

• for prestressed girders: Liebherr LR1300 and Grove GMK 5240;

• for post-tensioned girders: Liebherr LR1300, Grove GMK 7550 and Grove GMK 5240;

• for bow truss: Liebherr LR 1300 and Grove GMK 7550; and

• for box truss: Grove GMK 7550. CEG