KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Southside commuters might want to budget extra time for their travels this weekend as part of a Missouri Department of Transportation project on the Blue River Bridge over Interstate 435.
The work is set to start at 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 4
"Underneath the bridge we are replacing the bearings,” said Chris Karlin, Deputy Project Director for MoDOT. “They've been there since 1966 so they need to be replaced. We have to lift up the whole bridge, take out the old ones, put in the new ones, and lower it back down."
Friday evening, MoDOT will start closing lanes of eastbound I-435 between State Line Road and the interchange with I-470/I-49/71 Highway.
There will be one eastbound lane of I-435 open. MoDOT will shift it over to the westbound lanes. That means the westbound lanes will also be reduced to just two lanes.
MoDOT will also reduce westbound I-470 going into the interchange to just one lane during this project. They hope to have every reopened by early Sunday morning.
"I would not think the impact would be as much as people think,” said Karlin. “It seems like at peak hours it is very busy, but at night time and on the weekend it drops off a lot. It sounds like it is going to be really terrible, but I don't think it'll be as bad as people think.”
This is part of the larger I-435 South Loop Link Project MoDOT started last year.
