Video screenshot.In the time-lapse video below, the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) replaces the State Route 299 bridge over Interstate 24 in Dade County in just one weekend using Accelerated Bridge Construction. The bridge was built in two segments next to the existing bridge while traffic continued to flow underneath. Once the bridge was completed, the old bridge was closed for the weekend and demolished, then the new segments were slid into place.
“This is the first time Georgia has done a full ABC project,” GDOT’s Andrew Hoenig told WSB-TV 2. “And what we did was, we moved the bridge into place in one weekend.”
The key to the bridge replacement was keeping Interstate 24 open, as that part of the interstate handles 65,000 vehicles per day, and one fourth of those are big rigs.
“If they would have shut it down, even another week or so, every 24 hours, it’s tremendous the loss that these people here would take,” county executive Ted Rumley told the news agency.”
“That weekend, we closed 299 and actually moved the eastbound side first, and then we moved the westbound side,” Hoenig told the news agency. “This is the first time, we think, in the country, where they did two moves over live traffic in one weekend.”
