I-495 bridge closure snarls commute

UPDATED STORY: I-495 bridge closure will mean weeks of traffic chaos

The closure of Interstate 495 caused major delays for commuters Tuesday morning. DelDOT reported major delays on southbound I-95 from the Pennsylvania line to Harvey Road during the morning rush.

And it sounds like motorists should get used to that for a while. Interstate 495 is closed indefinitely while bridge inspectors investigate a problem with the concrete columns supporting the highway's span over the Christina River in Wilmington, state officials said Monday. A Delaware Department of Transportation engineer said at a Tuesday briefing that the bridge closure will be weeks, not days, as crews must work to shore up the structure.

That segment of I-495 carries an average 90,000 vehicles a day, and Tuesday's morning rush hour traffic felt the pinch.

"We had some tractor trailers going down Fourth Street," said Cpl. Mark Ivey, spokesman for Wilmington Police. "Those streets downtown are just not meant for heavy truck traffic."

Ivey said city officials are working with DelDOT to establish detours to divert particularly large vehicles around the city.

"We're expecting delays again during the evening rush," he said. "Anyone who does head into the city should expect that."

Northbound traffic must exit I-495 at Terminal Avenue. Southbound traffic is being diverted to I-95 at the Pennsylvania line, although a lane is open to local traffic through 12th Street.

Tuesday morning, DelDOT reported delays on southbound I-95 from the state line to Harvey Road, and on northbound I-95 through Churchmans Marsh heading into Wilmington.

"Four of the 37 support columns are tilted as much as about 4 percent out of vertical alignment," Transportation Secretary Shailen Bhatt said. "The bridge will remain closed until further investigation determines the cause of the shifting and what remediation needs to take place."

Crews at the scene Monday were placing tilt sensors on the concrete columns – each 5 feet in diameter – to determine whether they're still moving and to assess the overall condition of the bridge, built in 1974, Bhatt said.

Officials had no estimate of when the highway will reopen and said it was too early to know what caused the tilting.

The state Department of Transportation received a report late Friday regarding an "anomaly" at the bridge and sent a crew of inspectors to the scene on Monday. The report came from a local engineering firm that was nearby on another matter.

"It didn't come to us as an emergency call. It came to us as a, 'Hey, heads up. You guys might want to take a look at this,'" DelDOT chief engineer Rob McCleary said.

"It wasn't like a number of years ago when a citizen found a crack in a beam, and that was immediately discernible as a concern. This call didn't come in that way."

Bhatt added, "Had someone communicated that there's a significant situation, we would have gone out there. Also, I want to communicate that we're probably acting out of an abundance of caution in closing the bridge."

Also on Monday, a DelDOT employee crossing the bridge reported that the northbound barrier wall separating the traffic lanes had lifted about a foot higher than the southbound barrier wall in the area of the leaning columns, McCleary said.

The bridge, including all support columns, is being re-inspected, he added.

"These in question are on the south bank," McCleary said of the four leaning columns, which sit adjacent to one another. "I don't know that they're all tilted to the same degree."

The closing is the latest in a long history of vexing and sometimes dramatic disruptions for I-495 travelers.

In February 1988, a tanker truck carrying 8,500 gallons of gasoline plunged nearly 60 feet from the Christina River Bridge and exploded in marshland along the east side of the highway below the span, killing the driver and forcing a weekslong closure for repairs. Flames and heat cracked the bridge's concrete support columns. During the early 1990s, motorists endured years of disruptions along the same highway when premature cracking in roadbed concrete forced the replacement of the entire stretch of interstate.

The leaning columns sit on a concrete footer, supported by steel piles that run 125 feet into the ground, McCleary said.

The bridge was last inspected in October 2012 and would've been inspected again this fall, under DelDOT's inspection schedule.

The main span over the river was rated fracture critical, meaning that the failure of one element could cause a failure of the structure.

"The main span is not what's in question here. There's 38 spans," McCleary said. "The one that's having the issue is not fracture critical."

Gov. Jack Markell in January proposed raising Delaware's per-gallon gas tax by 10 cents and authorizing new debt to fund new spending on transportation infrastructure, including road and bridge fixes. The proposal has been met with opposition among members of both parties in Legislative Hall with many lawmakers unwilling to cast votes on higher taxes that they believe could leave them vulnerable in an election year.

Officials said the bridge would be monitored continually to figure out what movement is occurring. A contractor, Pennoni Associates Inc., was assisting DelDOT engineers.

"We're not sure when this movement happened or if it's still happening. That's why we're using an abundance of caution on this," McCleary said. "Until we look at that data, we can't say and we don't know what the cause is right now."

Jeff Montgomery and Jonathan Starkey contributed to this story.

Contact Melissa Nann Burke at (302) 324-2329, mburke@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @nannburke.