Updated March 2 with rescheduled demolition — The Missouri Department of Transportation plans to close the section of Interstate 64 leading up to and crossing the Missouri River between St. Charles and St. Louis counties for at least an hour on Monday, March 7.
Weather permitting, the department will finish demolishing the 1930's era Boone Bridge. The bridge is no longer needed now that traffic has been moved to the adjacent 1980's era bridge and the new Boone Bridge.
MoDOT will begin closing ramps at 9:30 a.m. with I-64 between Boone's Crossing and Route K scheduled to close at 9:45 a.m.
Updated Feb. 26 with cancelation — It appears drivers traveling between St. Charles and St. Louis counties on Interstate 64 won't have to find alternate routes starting around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday after all. The Missouri Department of Transportation has announced that it is postponing the second demolition of the 1930's era Boone Bridge due to possible inclement weather .
The National Weather Service is predicting a chance for thunderstorms and other precipitation beginning on Monday and lasting for much of the week.
In a statement, MoDOT said Friday that the demolition will be rescheduled at a later time.
Updated Feb. 25 with details of second scheduled demolition — Interstate 64 across the Missouri River is scheduled to close again briefly next Wednesday, March 2.
The Missouri Department of Transportation plans to demolish the remaining sections of the 1930's-era Boone Bridge between St. Charles and St. Louis counties.
MoDOT says ramps will begin to close at 9:30 a.m. and I-64 will close around 9:45 a.m. The interstate is expected to remain closed for at least an hour.
Updated 10 a.m., Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2016, with postponement information — The Missouri Department of Transportation has delayed the demolition of part of the Boone Bridge until Thursday. The department cites this past weekend's poor weather for the postponement.
Our original story:
A major route connecting St. Charles and St. Louis counties is going to be shut down for about two hours on Wednesday.
Interstate 64 near the Missouri River will be closed just after rush hour Wednesday morning so that one of the trusses on the 1930s-era bridge can be blown up.
The bridge is no longer needed now that the 1980s bridge has been rehabbed and opened to westbound traffic. The new bridge opened to eastbound traffic last summer.
“If everything goes as planned, the closure of some ramps will start shortly after 9 a.m.,” said Jim Gremaud, Boone Bridge project director for the Missouri Department of Transportation. “The interstate closure will start about 9:45 a.m. If everything goes as planned hopefully we’ll have the highway opened back up by 10:30 or so.”
To be safe, Gremaud said people should plan on using I-70 or Route 364 between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. Wednesday. The other truss on the 1930s bridge will be destroyed about ten days later, causing another road closure.
But after that, Gremaud said, the finishing touches of the Boone Bridge project shouldn’t impact traffic much.
There will be a few lane closures to finish the pedestrian path across the bridge, which Gremaud said should be complete around June 1. Once that path is complete, bike riders and hikers will be able to use the bridge to connect between the Katy Trail and the Monarch Levee Trail.
Gremaud said in addition to replacing the 1930s bridge, building a new bridge allowed MoDOT to add a westbound lane of traffic across the river. Both the 1980s bridge and the new bridge have four lanes, while the older bridge had three.
Commuters who are going from St. Louis County to St. Charles County "used to experience delays pretty much every late afternoon or evening and now we’ve pretty much eliminated that since we’ve given them another lane of traffic across the river,” said Gremaud.
Follow Camille Phillips on Twitter: @cmpcamille.
