A beautiful, clear, cold day in Brattleboro for a town field trip to the new I-91 bridge, for a rare chance to walk across the bridge before it is opened to traffic. Many people took advantage of the offer of free bus rides to the site, departing from the BUHS parking lot at regular intervals.
Quite an afternoon and opportunity, and everyone seemed to have a good time.
Great Pictures!
Thanks for posting this.
a bit more
People on our bus agreed that having more town field trips, in warmer weather, would be a fun thing. : )
Some of the folks who built the bridge were there, seemed really proud of their work and happy to be able to show it off.
It felt quite solid out there. No sway in the wind.
The cones were there to keep people to one side and allow the busses to move across for pickup. (Trivia – the first non-construction vehicles to use the bridge were school busses!)
I-91 changed the flashing signs to say “Don’t follow the busses…”
You could stay up there as long as you wanted, and as long as you could take the cold.
I had one hand out of my gloves to help snap photos and by about 3/4 of the way across, I was approaching frostbite and had to do some quick warming.
School busses now have seatbelts, video cameras monitoring you, and new rules such as “no negative talk.”
Some interesting facts.
I spoke with one of the crew and found some interesting info.
If I remember right he said there’s 14,000 yards of concrete and 4 million lbs of rebar.
Also, the strandings that tie or “compress’ the concrete in the bridge would stretch from here to Canada and back.
There’s 2 tunnels inside the bridge that slope from 12′ high to 30’high inside.
I thanked him for his time and all the hard work on this structure. He said most of the feedback from people was positive.