By Rob Sabo Special to the NNBW
Tuesday, May 3, 2022
Work crews on the Spaghetti Bowl project have poured enough concrete to pave nearly 3,600 residential driveways, and motorists soon will begin driving on it when traffic switches to the new southbound lanes of the Interstate 580 freeway.
Work on the Spaghetti Bowl Xpress project is more than 75 percent complete, said Seth Alexander, project manager for Ames Construction/Q&D Construction (AQD), the joint venture partnership formed to design and build the $181 million Xpress project.
“We are on schedule, and our next big milestone is to switch southbound traffic onto the new southbound pavement,” Alexander told NNBW. “That includes the new southbound bridges. We were able to keep working most of this winter, and of course we can always have spring storms in the Sierra, but we are hoping for more good construction weather ahead of us.
“This traffic switch opens up some of that new pavement and (widened) bridges on southbound I-580,” Alexander added. “We will still be working (on that side) once the switch happens, and there will be traffic controls like lanes closed at night, ramp closures and weekend traffic control activities. But this is a major milestone for us to put traffic onto that new southbound pavement.”
Motorists headed south on I-580 have been using the northbound lanes since February 2021, said Meg Ragonese, NDOT public information officer. Southbound I-580 lanes are scheduled to be switched to the new widened bridges and new outside southbound lanes by May, Ragonese added. Construction will then focus on renovating the inside interstate lanes.
“It will not be the final configuration, and drivers will still see continuing interstate and ramp renovations through the end of the year,” Ragonese told NNBW. “Even though drivers will travel some of those new lanes, large-scale construction and ramp renovations will continue through the end of the year to finalize Spaghetti Bowl Xpress improvements.”
The number of new lanes added for southbound motorists depends where you are driving, said Alma Piceno-Ramirez, resident engineer for NDOT. A single through-lane was added on I-580 right at the Spaghetti Bowl where it crosses over Interstate 80. Three additional lanes were added after the I-80 eastbound and westbound onramps merge with southbound I-580, bringing the total number of southbound lanes to six when the project is wrapped up and the southbound lanes are fully opened, she noted.
The shift will likely ease some of the travel difficulties currently being experienced by drivers and commuters, but this initial phase is but a small part of the much larger Spaghetti Bowl improvement project, Piceno-Ramirez added.
“This particular phase, the main goal was to improve safety for the I-80 eastbound to I-580 southbound ramp because of past incidents there,” she said. “In order to improve the safety of the E-S ramp, we also had to widen the southbound lanes.
“It does somewhat temporarily improve the capacity, but ultimately we are not done yet,” she added. “It’s kind of like a teaser of what’s to come when we finish the project.”
Bob Vrooman, project manager for NDOT, added that motorists will be using some of the new on and off ramps, but the interstate’s true capacity simply won’t be utilized until the project is complete. Remaining work includes reconstruction of local cross-streets under the widened bridges, landscaping and aesthetic treatments, and reconstruction of the median of both northbound and southbound I-580. The bridge over the Union Pacific Railroad will also be widened this summer.
The current work is the first leg of a five-phase expansion that’s expected to run through 2039. Buildout of that initial leg has been no mean feat, either – it was very technically challenging to widen six existing bridges in less than a mile and a half, Alexander said.
“These bridges are very close together, and there’s a lot of coordination that was required,” he said. “It took a lot of coordination of temporary traffic control to keep traffic moving safely through the project. There was a lot of work that occurred at night to keep impacts to a minimum for the traveling public.
“A lot of those bridges are over local streets, and we had to maintain access (on those roads) for pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists,” he added. “That is where the project was really challenging – coordinating with all the local agencies and outside stakeholders.”
The bridge over the Union Pacific Railroad required an extra layer of synchronization, as did the bridge spanning the Truckee River.
“It was very challenging working over a river,” Alexander said. “It's not that it was challenging to get the materials or manpower, but it was to keep (the project) moving forward and keep all the stakeholders happy.”
Additional issues that cropped up since the project started were materials delays, labor and COVID-19 issues. However, AQD and NDOT dedicated such a large pool of manpower to the project that the team was able to overcome any issues that sprung up along the way, Alexander said.
“So far, nothing has slowed this team down,” he said.
“It’s still an active work zone, and there are still people working out there every day. Even as parts of the freeway are opening up, please be aware that there still will be reduced speeds, traffic control, and people working out there to finish up the project,” Alexander added.
