By Pepper Fisher

PORT ANGELES –Washington State Dept. of Transportation crews made some progress on the construction of the new Elwha River Bridge west of Port Angeles over the weekend.

The effort requires stopping traffic for around 30 minutes at a time as they use cranes to hoist and position huge concrete girders atop the new concrete supports. Those temporary stoppages were set to occur between 3:00am and 5:00am, but we’re hearing now that the traffic stoppages could go on until as late as 11:00am.

We’ve learned that those girders, which are being shipped from Tacoma, and can only be moved at night, and they haven’t been arriving to the work site until around 4:00am.

We’re told the middle girders will are a bigger challenge and more time consuming, so expect 30-minute traffic stoppages until as late as 11:00am.

(Photo courtesy of Jesse Major)