“Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, at left of group, and other officials celebrate the demolition of two lanes of the Mulholland Drive bridge over Interstate 405 ahead of schedule last weekend. The event that many feared would result in epic traffic jams ended early and calmly.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the Omaha World-Herald article quoted and cited below.
(p. 6A) They paid Kiewit to build the Mulholland Bridge.
Now they’re paying Kiewit to tear it down.
And they’ll pay Kiewit to build it again.
It’s all part of the billion-dollar Interstate 405 improvement project in Los Angeles, which caught national attention last weekend when the busy freeway shut down for 36 hours so workers could remove the first chunk of the bridge that spans the Sepulveda Pass.
Omaha-based Kiewit Corp.’s Kiewit Infrastructure West Co. is the main contractor for the project.
Traffic officials in Southern California, who had predicted “Carmageddon” and warned motorists to stay away, were relieved when the closure of one of the nation’s busiest freeways — the stretch is traveled by an estimated 500,000 vehicles on a typical weekend — ended on 11:30 a.m. Sunday instead of 5 a.m. Monday as originally planned.Kiewit reportedly got a (p. 7A) $300,000 bonus for beating the deadline.
For the full story, see:
STEVE JORDON. “KIEWIT WORK ON ‘CARMAGEDDON’ BRIDGE; IT’S UP, DOWN AND UP.” Omaha World-Herald (Sat., July 23, 2011): 6A-7A.