13 June 2012
The Rt. 250 bridge at Shadwell will reopen to traffic after 9 a.m. on Friday ( June 15), three weeks ahead of the scheduled July 9 reopening. Motorists should continue to use the detour route during the morning commute on Friday.
The bridge was closed to traffic on May 1, but work on the restoration project began last fall by Fairfield-Echols LLC, of Fishersville which was awarded the $1,788,671.20 contract by the Virginia Department of Transportation. The contractor worked through the winter outside the travel lanes to complete as much work as possible before the closure. Fairfield-Echols also did other work prior to the closure, such as casting the bridge parapets along with the deck sections, to minimize the time required to replace the superstructure.
With the project’s completion all legal-load vehicles, including large trucks, can use the bridge. The new bridge is also built to current design standards with wider travel lanes and shoulders. In addition to the bridge work the roadway approaches on both sides of the bridge were widened to match the width of the new structure.
After the bridge is reopened to traffic VDOT will remove the second left-turn lane at the I-64/Rt. 250 interchange at Pantops. That work is scheduled to be done early next week; the traffic pattern at the interchange will revert to the pattern in place prior to the bridge closure. The second turn lane was added to accommodate the additional traffic using I-64 as the detour route. - Source: VDOT
