NITRO, W.Va. — One of the key sections of the second most expensive project in Gov. Jim Justice’s Roads to Prosperity program has been completed.
The ribbon was cut Friday afternoon on the new I-64 westbound bridge over the Kanawha River at Nitro. The Nitro World War I Memorial Bridge is part of a six-mile interstate widening project between Nitro and the U.S. Route 35 interchange at Scott Depot in Putnam County.
“Today is a monumental day,” Gov. Jim Justice said at the ribbon cutting ceremony. “This bottleneck has got to go and today is the start of getting rid of this terrible bottleneck that absolutely hampers you in every way.”
The bridge will be used for both westbound and eastbound traffic in the months ahead as contractors dismantle the current bridge and build a second new bridge in its place. That stretch of I-64 will be three lanes in each direction when the project is fully completed.
It’s a $225 million project, the second most expensive in the Roads to Prosperity program, behind in price only to the multiple bridges replaced on I-70 in Wheeling.
The I-64 project is a joint venture of Brayman Construction Company and Trumbull Corporation. Brayman Chairman and CEO Stephen Muck said the design-build project has moved at an impressive pace. He said the work began less than 12 months after being given the notice to proceed.
“In our world of of heavy civil infrastructure that is an unprecedented process and an unprecedented short period of time to get a great work like this started,” Muck said.
Brayman and Trumbull are both union contractors. Muck said union workers built the bridge.
“I am very proud of the work they’ve done here, the cooperation we have from a labor-management standpoint in the state of West Virginia is all part of the cooperation that has brought us to this point,” Muck said Friday.
The new bridge’s name links it to Nitro’s creation as part of the World War I effort.
The switchover of all westbound traffic to the new bridge is expected to be completed by Saturday afternoon with eastbound traffic scheduled to use the old bridge for another two weeks before being switched to the new bridge. Contractors will then begin dismantling the Donald M. Legg Memorial Bridge built in 1962, clearing the way for the second bridge to be constructed.
State Transportation Secretary Jimmy Wriston praised the project at the Roads to Prosperity program proposed by Gov. Justice a year after taking office in 2016 and voted on in October 2017. Wriston said more than 1,200 projects have been completed thus far.
“It has turned the way we think, it has turned the way we act, it has turned the way we perform our jobs around,” Wriston said.