Bridge piece finally rolls into Tacoma

GIG HARBOR, Wash. – The tractor-trailer rig carrying a massive bridge expansion joint finally made it to the site of the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge early Saturday after a three-week delay in Spokane.

The 100-ton deck expansion joint, on the 200-foot-long tractor-trailer, started across the state on Wednesday. The state Department of Transportation said crews planned to lift the expansion joint off its trailer Saturday afternoon.

The deck expansion joint, and a twin parked in Sioux Falls, S.D., will be installed on each end of the new suspension bridge being built parallel to the 1950 Tacoma Narrows Bridge between Tacoma and the Kitsap Peninsula on state Highway 16.

The accordion-like joints each will allow 56 inches of deck expansion and contraction caused by temperature changes, wind, traffic or seismic motion.

D.S. Brown Co. in Minnesota fabricated the joints and hired Big Boat Movers of Vasalla, Texas, to ship them to Tacoma.

The original tractor-trailer hauling the deck expansion joint was halted in mid-March at the Spokane Port of Entry on the Washington-Idaho border east of Spokane after state officials said its weight was not distributed correctly on the trailer’s axles, violating terms of a Transportation Department permit.

On Monday, D.S. Brown hired Omega-Morgan, a Tacoma heavy equipment moving company, to haul the load the rest of the way.

The same procedure will be used for the second expansion joint.

Big Boat Movers will haul it from South Dakota to Spokane, where Omega-Morgan will take it the rest of the way.