The Blaine Hill Bridge is soon to be entering its final stage of construction. (T-L Photo/GAGE VOTA)

BLAINE – Ohio Department of Transportation and Beaver Excavating Co. are in the final stages of box beam installation of the Blaine Hill Bridge.

ODOT District 11 Public Information Officer Lauren Borell said that she is excited with the progress the bridge, originally closed in July 2024, is making despite the abnormal harsh conditions the Ohio Valley has faced this year.

“The only time that we’ve had downtime on the project was during those really cold temperatures, when work couldn’t be performed on the bridge. Especially with the beam and working with steel. But they haven’t lost any traction or anything with all of the snow we’ve had,” Borell said.

She added that 400 box beams will have been installed by Beaver Excavating Co., with the final one being completed on Feb. 16. Once the beams are completed, Borell said the contractor will begin laying down concrete in March.

Once the concrete is laid down, the final steps will be taken to be able to get the bridge open in early summer.

“We’re still looking at that early summer date of opening traffic. We don’t have a definitive date at that time but once we get closer we will of course share that information with the public,” Borell said. “One thing I will mention is that once we do open traffic, there will still need to be work done on the bridge. However, we are going to maintain one lane of traffic in each direction so we won’t have all lanes open to traffic right off the bat, but we will maintain one lane in each direction.”

She added that, unlike when the bridge originally closed to one lane before fully closing down, there will be a traffic light when it reopens so traffic will be able to flow both ways until the bridge is able to be fully opened.

“Alternating traffic is what we’ll do and that’ll just be for a couple of weeks just for them to get things finished up,” Borell said. “But our biggest goal with this is to get the bridge open to traffic. Especially for that area, we know how vital that bridge is to the locals and traffic for the area. So that’s a big goal of ours to get that traffic back open.”

She added that ODOT will continue posting on social media to provide residents with significant updates on the project.

“We’ll continue to keep folks updated on the schedule and especially that reopening date. We’ll share that as soon as we know it,” she said.