(Radio Iowa) – D-O-T engineer Clayton Burke says the ferry taking people across the Mississippi River after the old bridge was closed has been running most of the time. He says they are averaging between 500 and 600 passengers a day with 300 to 400 vehicles every day. The old bridge was closed so work can continue on the new bridge. Burke says weather is the only thing that has stopped the ferry. “With that Thanksgiving storm obviously and the holiday we had to stop the ferry service for day and a half just because of the weather and and what-not,” Burke says. Burke gave an update to the Iowa Transportation Commission Tuesday on the new bridge, and says with the peers in place steel is going up.

Mississippi River bridge at Lansing. (File photo, Iowa DOT)

“The steel truss has been erected on the Iowa side through that first span on the left side of your sheet there. They’ve started with construction of the cantilever towards the Wisconsin side, they started construction of that part of the truss. Construction has slowed down a little bit, but they’re still out there working, obviously with the weather that’s going to slow things down,” Burke says. He says they will soon take down the steel from the old bridge.

“The implosion is coming up on the existing bridge, that’s coming up on December 18th,” Burke says. Burke says the ferry runs during holidays, but the reduce the hours to 12 hours a day instead of 16 hours.