Earth work between river & Route 15
SUNBURY – Bridge work is coming along as scheduled on the Central Susquehanna Valley Thruway project. Ted Deptula, assistant construction engineer for PennDOT, gave us an update on the ongoing construction. Deptula was a guest on WKOK’s On The Mark and said with the exception of this week, construction is going very well.
He said they did have to stop work this week due to the heavy snow. Deptula talked about construction of the bridge that will cross the Susquehanna River from Winfield to Point Township, “Bridge construction currently is about 31 percent complete. That started in fall of 2015 and that will continue until fall of 2020. We have most of the earthwork done. We moved around a million yards of earth and now we are working on the substructure for the western side of the bridge. The bridge has 14 piers and two abutments that have to be constructed.”
Deptula talked about how the Susquehanna River levels can impact the construction, “The contractor does keep an eye on the river levels up stream. We know what the elevation is of the causeway. The causeway is the platform they constructed out into the river where they are doing the work. The contractor monitors that and when it starts coming up so far, they start moving some of the equipment or get it ready to be moved, because there is quite a bit of equipment and they can’t move it in just an instant.”
Deptula also talked about interchanges that will be built, “There will be an interchange right near County Line Road, but that interchange will impact mostly Route 15, northbound and southbound. It will impact County Line Road just a little bit. Once we get on to the other side of the river, Ridge Road will be impacted. We are relocating a section of Ridge Road. There will be a Ridge Road interchange and that will be the only two interchanges on the northern section of the project.”
Deptula says the contract for the earthwork on west side of the river will be out for bid next week. That project should get started around the beginning of May and will take about two years. You can hear more from Deptula on the ongoing construction work being done on the CSVT project by listening to Thursday’s On The Mark program online at www.wkok.com.
