KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Missouri Department of Transportation closed two northland lanes of Interstate 35 over the Christopher Bond Bridge Thursday to complete urgent repairs.
MoDOT maintenance crews closed the lanes between Levee Road and Front Street to complete expansion joint repair work. The lanes reopened by 3 p.m.
🚨Breaking/Traffic Alert: An expansion joint has loosened NB I-35 across the Bond Bridge. Crews are on scene to repair. Expect delays. #kctraffic pic.twitter.com/a5tXZapkU0
— MoDOT Kansas City (@MoDOT_KC) April 20, 2022
Expansion joints on the bridge have caused issues three times this year.
In February, MoDOT crews were forced to close a middle lane of NB I-35 to complete emergency repairs. A day later, crews shut down the same stretch to complete more permanent repair of the damaged expansion joint.
Earlier this month, a damaged expansion joint forced the closure of a southbound lane of the bridge.
On Thursday, KSHB 41 spoke with Jacob Wessling who drives on the bridge often.
"Minimum, three to four times a week. So, almost every day," Wessling said.
MoDOT called the repairs urgent.
"It doesn't really reflect well on Kansas City, I would say, and it slows down traffic throughout the city," Wessling said.
Jeffrey Hardy, assistant district engineer for the Kansas City MoDOT District, addressed Thursday whether three repairs at this point in the year for a bridge are normal.
"It is probably not normal, but it's something that we're going to go ahead and monitor," Hardy said.
Hardy said the problem centers around the cover plate, which is a piece of metal on top of what he calls the finger joints. They make up the expansion joint.
"They expand and contract inside of each other to allow vehicles to cross the bridge safely, but also allow the bridge to expand and contract," Hardy said.
Without the cover plate piece, Hardy explains your average car would be fine. It's a small trailer or bicycle he worries about falling into the joint.
Hardy said fatigue from traffic going on top of the plates is what's causing the problem.
"If you sit there and you bend a piece of metal enough, it's going to break, and unfortunately, that's what's happening out there," Hardy said.
The hope was the cover plates would last up to 25 years.
MoDOT has now hired a consultant to look at a possible long-term solution.
"It's going to be another plate joint over top, but this one, instead of covering the whole finger joint, it's going to cover half of it and it will be welded a little bit differently so we don't have the fatigue cracking more down the center of the plate like we currently have," Hardy said.
For Wessling, he's glad something will be done and hopes for a fix soon.
"Anything to improve the current situation, I think, would be beneficial," Wessling said.
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