January 20, 2017
By Paragon News Director Paul Joseph –
About 16 people attended an informal public meeting at City Hall in Elk City one evening this past week as the Oklahoma Department of Transportation unveiled and asked for input on a proposed bridge in town.
Though construction is well over a year-and-a-half away, ODOT’s engineers are gathering input on the aesthetics of the design through a survey that was disseminated to the group while they presented a PowerPoint with possible suggestions.
Will Snipes, ODOT’s Division 5 Construction Assistant Engineer, says the new bridge is actually a reconstruction of a current bridge over Interstate 40. He says it’s the South Main Street/State Highway 6 Bridge which has recently been determined to be in need of repair.
Snipes says it’s not going to be just your run-of-the-mill bridge.
Snipes says the almost $10-million-dollar bridge project will actually be two bridges that will be built separately, but fitted together. He says the design is called a D-D-I, or Diverging Diamond Interchange – something that’s quite out of the ordinary in Oklahoma.
Snipes says the bridge style won’t be replicated on a regular basis but will be utilized in places around the state where the terrain and transportation requirements dictate. He says that’s why they’re using it in Elk City, because it fits the condition at that location and has become popular in other parts of the nation.
He added that the project will take at least 12-months and ODOT construction crews are set to start on it in the fall or early winter of 2018.
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