Casper Bridge Decks Take Shape as Second Construction Season Begins

Travelers are seeing new bridges taking shape as the Casper marginal project enters its second construction season.

"A multi-year project to replace five aging bridges in Casper reached a milestone last month with the first two structures receiving concrete bridge decks," says Doug McGee with WYDOT Public Affairs.

The 57.5 million dollar project takes up just under a mile of I-25 near downtown Casper. To minimize impacts to travelers and businesses, crews are keeping construction moving year-round.

Project Engineer Jeff Greenwood says they're still on schedule. "It's an inconvenience, but we're trying our best to get it done as soon as possible and as least amount of impact as possible."

Crews have spent the last year removing and replacing the bridges on the north side of I-25 and on F Street while traffic has been shifted to the southbound side of the highway.

"We need to keep the interstate open to general public, so doing it in two phases allows us to put traffic head to head and build one half at a time."

The plan is to shift traffic to the northbound lanes this summer.

Once they get the traffic moved over, says Greenwood, they will start demoing the southbound side. Then the cycle continues, they'll do everything to that side they did on the northbound side, and while they do that they will be working on F street.

Greenwood says they're about 70% done with the substructure work on F street.

The overall project is slated for completion next year. Until then, drivers can expect single-lane head-to-head traffic and reduced speeds through work zones.