June 19, 2021: Construction cranes tower over the “basket handles” of the new I-74 bridge over the Mississippi River, as seen from the Bettendorf side.
The last expected completion date of the Illinois-bound (southbound/eastbound) span of the I-74 bridge was “the end of 2021”. It’s going to make it.
Next Wednesday (Dec. 1), the bridge will be open for walking from the Illinois side. Days later, all traffic will be on the new bridges, on the correct sides of each bridge, and the one remaining lane in use on the old bridge for Moline-specific traffic will be shut down. This will leave eastbound I-680 on the Missouri River as the last border bridge in Iowa on an interstate pre-dating the interstate system. (I need to extend the timeline space out another decade, don’t I?)
Nearly 14 years ago, the expected cost of the future bridge was ballooning to $791 million. In the end, even that only would have paid for two-thirds of it. (The final cost of $1.2 billion includes $74.5 million in cost overruns vs. what was bid.)
The old twin spans will stay up through the winter. After that, “I’m fairly confident explosives will be involved,” the project manager told WQAD.