Dish Soap Helps Bridge Slide into Place

Brief

Utah crews used a hydraulic system and dish soap over 3&frac12 hours to slide a 1.1-million-pound bridge into place over Interstate 15 at Cedar City. The overnight operation revealed in a time-lapse video was part of an accelerated operation that minimized the need for traffic delays.

Insight

This time-lapse video from the Utah Department of Transportation shows the 3.5-hour slide as crews worked overnight to complete the new bridge over Interstate 15 at Cedar City.During the process, dish soap was used to smooth the slide via a hydraulic system that inched the bridge into place, according to UDOT.

“Our crews just slid a 1.1-million-pound bridge on I-15 in Cedar City using hard work, ingenuity and a little bit of dish soap last night,” UDOT announced July 14. “This is a unique project because the bridge we’re sliding has actually been used as both the northbound and southbound bridge in the last year.”

Workers on the July 13 bridge slide on I-15 in Cedar City, Utah, used Dawn dish soap to help move the new deck into place.The accelerated bridge construction enabled the agency to reduce traffic delays while it replaced northbound and southbound bridges on I-15 over East Nichols Canyon Road.

The project, which began a year ago, first involved building a new center bridge between the two I-15 bridges. After it was built, northbound traffic was shifted to the new bridge, and the northbound bridge was demolished and replaced. Northbound traffic was then shifted to that new northbound bridge, while southbound drivers were shifted to the new center bridge. The southbound bridge was then demolished, and a supporting structure was built for a new deck.

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