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Harrison Street Bridge Now Open After Two-Year Closure

By Stephanie Lulay | April 21, 2016 11:49am
 The Harrison Street Bridge will reopen Thursday.
The Harrison Street Bridge will reopen Thursday.
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dnainfo/Dave Newbart

NEAR WEST SIDE — Motorists, rejoice: After a two-year wait, the Harrison Street Bridge will reopen Thursday. 

The new bridge which runs over the Dan Ryan Expressway between Halsted Street and Desplaines Avenue features one lane of traffic in each direction, a dedicated bike lane and wider sidewalks for pedestrians, Illinois Department of Transportation officials said Thursday. The bridge serves as a heavily traveled link to the Near West Side and beyond. 

Earlier this month, IDOT officials said the bridge was slated to reopen sometime this spring. 

Reconstruction work on the bridge began in March 2014. While the bridge was originally supposed to be closed for six months, the east bridge was still being completed earlier this year, and both sides of the bridge remained closed. 

Construction on the two Harrison Street bridges — a westbound bridge and an eastbound bridge — was done separately to allow open access to a city pumping station. 

The completion of the entire bridge project was pushed back because of some delays with the West Harrison portion of the bridge and to allow for staging related to Dan Ryan and Eisenhower reconstruction work, IDOT spokesman Guy Tridgell said. 

The overhaul is part of a $475 million revamp of that intersection — known as the Circle Interchange — that has been described as one of the worst bottlenecks in the country, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation.

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