Construction Moving Forward On New Dresbach Bridge

The new Dresbach Bridge between Wisconsin and Minnesota is moving into the final stages of construction.

Built in 1967, the old Dresbach Bridge over the Mississippi River will officially close to Interstate 90 traffic on Friday. Minnesota Department of Transportation officials hope to finish all construction on the new crossing by November 2016 and completely remove the old structure by June 2017.

After four years of construction, the entire project will cost around $190 million, split between Minnesota and Wisconsin.

MnDOT project manager Mark Anderson said a bridge like Dresbach hasn’t been built by Minnesota since the 1980s. But after the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis suddenly collapsed in 2007, the state started replacing all “fracture critical” bridges.

“Fracture critical means that if one member of the bridge fails, there are no redundancies so the bridge could fail if one member does fail,” Anderson said.

Minnesota and Wisconsin are also working on the Mississippi River crossing in Winona, Minnesota and will soon begin construction on the crossing in Red Wing, Minnesota.

Anderson said the new concrete bridges are both safer and easier to maintain than the previous steel bridges.

“There’s a lot more maintenance with a steel structure with the rusting and things like that, especially in a chloride or salt environment where we have to burn off the snow and the ice,” Anderson said.

WisDOT project manager Rob Winterton said it will be another year before all construction along I-90 is completeon this side of the river. But he’s not sure finishing the massive project will mean new construction in other areas of the state.

“Funding is the biggest issue and we definitely have more needs than we do funds available, but we’ll try to do the best we can, I guess, with what we have,” Winterton said.

Anderson said drivers can expect traffic issues along I-90 to lessen this summer once both sides of the new bridge are open.