Work has been completed on the 2.5km-long deck of the Gordie Howe cable-stayed bridge between Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit.
The bridge, which spans the Detroit river, is being built by the Bridging North America consortium, made up of US, Canadian and Spanish companies. The design was carried out by Aecom, construction is being handled by Fluor and Aecon, and operations and maintenance will be carried out by ACS, Fluor and Aecon.
Jaime Castro-Maier, Aecon’s lead engineer for the Canadian deck team, said: “Building the bridge deck segment by segment is a marathon of construction cycles and is very intensive. At the final point, we were within a few millimetres of where we were expecting to be.
“If you look at the magnitude of this construction site and the size of the bridge deck – to talk about millimetres was very rewarding.”
The two halves of the bridge have been gradually reaching towards each other since December 2022. The last concrete slabs were put in place in May this year and the final 11m of custom-built mid-span was installed in the past six weeks.
Further work on the project will include re-stressing the stay cables, post-tensioning the deck, installing electrical, fire and drainage systems and completing the pedestrian and bicycle path.
It was announced in January this year that the bridge was 10 months behind schedule, according to the Windsor–Detroit Bridge Authority.
In 2018, Aecon rejoined the team after its sale to China Communications was blocked by the Canadian government.
When it is completed in the summer of 2025, the crossing will become the longest cable-stayed bridge in North America.
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