Ports of Indiana SR 249 Bridge Construction
The Ports of Indiana-Burns Harbor is one of the Great Lakes region’s most significant maritime commerce hubs, generating $4.6 billion annually in economic activity and supporting 28,000 jobs. Since the port opened in 1970, the roughly 325,000 trucks moving steel, chemicals, and agricultural products through the facility each year have been slowed by two-lane access along State Road 249. To relieve this bottleneck, the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) partnered with Superior Construction to build a new bridge that would provide the first phase of infrastructure improvements to double the port’s ocean cargo capacity.
- 1,200-foot-long bridge over multiple rail lines
- Five piers with more than 13,500 linear feet of driven pile
- Facilitates doubling of port’s ocean cargo capacity
- Critical connection to I-80/94 (Borman Expressway), I-94, I-65, and US 20
The Work
The SR 249 Bridge Construction Project addresses a long-standing transportation bottleneck that has constrained operations at the Ports of Indiana-Burns Harbor since the facility opened. Superior managed the technical challenges of building over active Class I railroad lines and commuter rail while maintaining precise coordination with port authorities, maritime operators and transportation officials to ensure uninterrupted port operations during construction.
Superior’s crews drove more than 13,500 linear feet of pile to establish the bridge’s foundation and constructed five mass pour footers and one mass pour pier cap to support the substantial loads. Five piers were erected to carry the superstructure, which consists of six structural steel beam spans totaling 1,200 feet in length over multiple rail lines.
Project Gallery
