New Missouri River Bridge on US Highway 85 Project A key element of the highway expansion project is the Lewis and Clark Bridge over the Missouri River. The existing bridge design included a two-girder steel superstructure, making it both fracture critical and infeasible to widen. However, having been just over 40 years old, there was potential for several more decades of use remaining. KLJ conducted an in-depth inspection of the bridge which revealed several small cracks in connections throughout the structure. Following the inspection, KLJ conducted both a fatigue analysis and life cycle cost analysis to compare rehabilitating the existing bridge and building a new two-lane bridge adjacent, versus building a four-lane bridge and removing the existing. Based on KLJ’s analysis, NDDOT cho

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