Beginning in 2017 with a study of the I-70 corridor to understand the current bridge conditions and necessary repairs from the Ohio State Line to the Pennsylvania State Line, and breaking ground in 2019, the I-70 Bridge Project in West Virginia is finally completed.
Governor Jim Justice and members of the West Virginia Department of Transportation (WVDOT) were in Wheeling on Friday to celebrate the successful completion.
A total of 25 bridges were fixed across one of the most traveled roads in the country.
"I'm ecstatic,” said Jimmy Wriston, secretary of transportation/commissioner of highways. “This is a project that has been around for decades. These projects were in bad shape. They really were in bad shape. We needed to do something, and we had no way to do it."
Many of the bridges, having been built in the 50's, went through rehabilitation, getting new deck and steel repairs.
"We literally had parts of the concrete deck slabs falling out from underneath to the roadways below. They were in desperate need," Wriston said.
The work was funded through the $200 million Roads to Prosperity Project, which is the largest contract in the state's history.
All entities of the division of transportation could not have been more grateful for it.
"Without the Governor's Roads to Prosperity program we, would not have been able to do this all at once," DOH District 6 Engineer Tony Clark said.
“The Governor's Roads to Prosperity was like a light shining from the heavens, finally we could go to work on this," Wriston said.
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Source: WTOV9.com
