Groundbreaking for New Bridge Highlights Community Renewal, Sustainability and Value

GroundbreakingSEP 15, 2011: A long-anticipated and highly-celebrated project reached an important milestone on September 8, when groundbreaking ceremonies were held for the new Morgan Street Bridge in Rockford, IL. The bridge is expected to be a centerpiece of revitalization efforts in an isolated and impoverished section of town.

“The rebuilding of this great bridge is long overdue,” said Rockford Mayor Larry Morrissey. “The rebuilding of our Morgan Street bridge is a symbol of the renewed investment to the older parts of our city — literally, our city’s renewal.” Also present was Illinois Governor Pat Quinn who lauded the project and shared in the groundbreaking ceremony.

CMT provided preliminary engineering services for the 532-foot landmark bridge, beginning in 2003. Context-sensitive solutions were brought to the design process and resulted in urban landscaping enhancements such as period lighting, a recreational path, and pedestrian overlooks.

The final bridge design was an outgrowth of a community focus group’s selection of bridge type (tied arch), and a subsequent value engineering (VE) study which helped determine the most economical arrangement of bridge spans and the details of the tied arch span. The VE study also resulted in consolidation of the IR and CCP rail lines, which allowed closure of four at-grade rail intersections. The soon-to-be abandoned IR right-of-way and rail structure across the Rock River will be converted to a multi-use path.

Construction is scheduled to be completed in spring of 2014.

Additional information about this project can be found here.

Crawford, Murphy & Tilly is a full-service consulting firm focused on four markets: aviation, highways and bridges, water and wastewater, and land development. CMT provides planning, design, and construction observation phase services on projects that range from simple to complex.