Crews dismantle old Harbor Bridge; to be recycled<\/a><\/p>\nWhile TxDOT hasn’t released a firm timeline on when that massive job will get underway, we do know it will briefly shut down ship traffic through the Port of Corpus Christi.<\/p>\n
The Port of Corpus Christi is a major driver of the Texas economy and fuels the nation with massive tankers and barges moving through the Corpus Christi Ship Channel every day.<\/p>\n
“We have about 8 vessels, and 12 barges that come underneath the bridge every day on average,” said Kyle Hogan, Chief Operating Officer for the Port.<\/p>\n
But that flow of vessel traffic will come to a brief stop as crews prepare for one of the most complex parts of the Harbor Bridge dismantling.<\/p>\n
TxDOT and Harbor Bridge crews will have roughly 36 hours to lower the old bridge’s nearly six-million-pound center span onto a barge below requiring a full closure of the ship channel.<\/p>\n
“So, because we’ve been very transparent and open about the 36-hour closure, the agents and customers have had an opportunity to adjust their schedules, to make sure those vessels can account for that 36-hour closure, so it’s not everybody sitting at the same red light,” said Hogan.<\/p>\n
Port officials compare the upcoming shutdown to a weather delay, something they deal with every year.<\/p>\n
“You can use the example of sometimes in the spring we have fog events and weather events that limit ship traffic coming in and out. \u00a0We set up a cue, then once the weather lifts, we bring vessels in and out with minimal disruption or no disruption,” said Hogan.<\/p>\n
The last significant closure of the Port was during 2017s Hurricane Harvey that lasted six days.<\/p>\n
But Hogan said this time is different thanks to a level of planning for more than a year.<\/p>\n
“We have a weekly update that we have ongoing even before I came onboard,” said Hogan. “And now that we are getting really close to executing the process of lowering the span. This collaborative and coordinated effort has come to a great place, where we are going to see everyone come together and do so with minimal interruption to commerce.”<\/p>\n
The temporary disruption will result in a long-lasting strong future. \u00a0Once the old bridge is gone, it will allow bigger ships to pass through the channel.<\/p>\n
The center span of the old bridge will be taken to Ingleside where parts will be recycled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TxDOT and Harbor Bridge crews will have 36 hours to lower the center span of the old bridge…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":["post-6109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}