Crews working to assemble Alaska’s future Juneau Creek Bridge – set to become the state’s longest and highest single-span bridge – are using two Liebherr LR 1300.1 SX crawler cranes to help move the historic project forward.
Workers are using the two cranes for critical lifts when moving and assembling the bridge’s steel girders, which are assembled on one side of the canyon and slowly pushed into place over the Juneau Creek Canyon with hydraulic presses using the bridge launch technique.
The bridge’s $151 million contract was awarded to a joint venture between QAP and Traylor Bros. in March 2022.
Tyler Becker, senior field engineer for Traylor Bros., Inc., was quoted in a Liebherr press release as saying Traylor Bros.’s companywide familiarity with LR 1300 cranes made them an especially good fit for the job. Operators also benefited in the unique topographical Alaska conditions from Liebherr’s Gradient Travel Aid, which determines the crane’s center of gravity and warns operators when they leave the “safe zone”.
To best tackle steep slopes and limited access roads on the jobsite, Traylor Bros. crews planned ahead for deploying the LR 1300.1 SX cranes, including simulating the required lifts with Liebherr’s Crane Planner 2.0 software to prepare for all possible scenarios.
When finished, the Juneau Creek Bridge will stretch 951 feet across a remote canyon near Cooper Landing in southern Alaska, boasting a pylon height of 285 feet. Work on the bridge is expected to finish in 2027.
The Juneau Creek Bridge falls under the umbrella of Alaska’s Cooper Landing Bypass project, a $1 billion, six stage initiative that including constructing 10 miles of new roadway north of Cooper Landing to redirect traffic out of the town during peak tourism season.
