(Radio Iowa) – Construction of the new Mississippi River bridge at the northeast Iowa town of Lansing is expected to impact barge traffic on the waterway during the busy shipping season ahead. Clayton Burke, with the Iowa Department of Transportation, says it will require a lot of communication between multiple parties.
“That is a challenge this year as we’re working in the navigation channel, we have to work very closely with the Coast Guard to coordinate that commercial traffic with our construction traffic,” Burke says, “and there’s going to be just a lot of communication between the commercial traffic, the Coast Guard, and the contractor, and the Iowa DOT.”
Burke says the challenge will be crews need a certain amount of time to set in the bridge beams and the crews just can’t stop in the middle of the process, thus the need for the constant communication. The original bridge, which was first used in 1931, was closed last October so work could continue on the new bridge, which is scheduled to open in 2027.
