Fitting over 20,000 cars a day into three lanes of traffic is a tall order. For the third consecutive year, West 12th Street is under construction with a major overhaul starting Friday.

The bridge that takes traffic over railroad tracks near 12th and Grange Avenue in Sioux Falls was built in 1965 and has served its purpose. City Engineer Chad Huwe was confident that proactively replacing is better than waiting to replace the span.

“Bridges are made of concrete and steel and this climate takes its toll on those two materials. It’s one of the bridges that’s in the federal bridge inspection program. It’s either we replace it or at some point we would have to post load limits which would have the same impact as closing lanes down.”

Huwe breaks down the traffic restrictions that started during the morning commute.

“Westbound traffic’s going to see the change first thing in the morning. We’re going to go down to one lane west bound and we’ll slide that to the north side of the bridge. After 8:00 AM we’ll push the two east bound lanes to the north and then we’ll close that south half of the bridge and the demolition will start.”

Huwe hopes for patience from commuters because this project will take a while.

“This work (on the north side) will go into July. Once the south end is built we’ll switch traffic over to (the new bridge). Then we’ll take down the north side and get that rebuilt. Hopefully by mid-November we’ll have it fully open to traffic.”

Drivers should be aware of the rush hour lane shift that will follow the same procedure as last year between Kiwanis and Western in 2015. In the morning there will be two lanes going east bound and one west bound. Evening traffic will have two lanes going west bound and one east bound.

Cars will not be the only traffic affected as Huwe indicated the passage will be closed to trains from Friday morning until Monday morning during demolition.


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