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Cline Avenue Bridge

Cline Avenue Bridge

Published March 29, 2026 By Sherman Cahal

The Cline Avenue Bridge is a box-girder structure that carries Cline Avenue over the Indiana Harbor Canal in East Chicago, Indiana.

Table Of Contents
  1. History
  2. Gallery

The Cline Avenue Bridge is a box-girder structure that carries Cline Avenue, formerly State Route 912, over the Indiana Harbor Canal in East Chicago, Indiana.

History

Cline Avenue Bridge (1983)

Before the construction of the Cline Avenue freeway, portions of State Truck Route 912 followed Kennedy Boulevard. In 1979, construction began on a new 5.7-mile expressway extending from the Indiana Toll Road to Chicago Avenue at a cost of $250 million. 1 3 The route generally followed the former Pennsylvania Railroad main line between Chicago and Pittsburgh, via Fort Wayne.

During construction, the project was the site of one of Indiana’s deadliest bridge disasters. On April 15, 1982, a ramp under construction near the canal collapsed during concrete pouring operations. 4 At about 10:40 a.m., Unit 4 gave way, destroying the scaffold stairway and leaving workers stranded on adjacent sections. The section flipped as it fell, crushing workers below. 3 A cherry picker was brought in to rescue those trapped on the remaining structure, but about five minutes later, Unit 5 collapsed as well. Twelve workers were killed immediately, a thirteenth died two weeks later, and a fourteenth later died from injuries sustained in the accident. 5

Investigators from the National Bureau of Standards, working for OSHA, found several failures that contributed to the collapse. 3 The most likely cause was the cracking of a concrete pad supporting a shoring tower leg. Investigators also found that one-inch bolts intended to connect key stringers to cross-beams had been replaced with friction clips, and there was no documentation supporting the change. They were also unable to locate engineering calculations for the pads as designed, and the pads themselves were built below even that undocumented design. Following the disaster, the Indiana Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) and two contractors for safety violations. 13

Despite the disaster, the expressway project continued. A portion of the Cline Avenue extension, including the canal bridge, opened to traffic on October 27, 1983. 13 This 1.6-mile segment extended from Michigan Avenue to Riley Road and cost $53.5 million. In 1987, the state designated the route between U.S. Route 12 and the Indiana Toll Road as the Highway Construction Workers Memorial Highway. 3

Bridge Closure

The original bridge remained in service until November 13, 2009, when INDOT closed it after an inspection found extensive corrosion. 1 The deterioration had severely weakened major structural elements, including the piers, concrete, beams, and cables. 2 INDOT initially considered replacing the bridge within three years, but concluded that the estimated $90 million cost was difficult to justify for a crossing carrying about 30,000 vehicles per day. Instead, the agency focused on improving surrounding roadways. On April 15, 2010, INDOT announced plans to demolish the bridge and reroute traffic via Riley and Dickey roads. 7

On November 2, INDOT reopened the westbound lanes of State Route 912 from Riley Road to the Indiana Toll Road while awaiting the results of a structural study on the eastbound lanes. 9 At the same time, the eastbound ramp from State Route 912 to Riley Road was demolished after it was found to be structurally unsound. Demolition of the canal bridge was completed on January 8, 2013. 1 The span over the Indiana Harbor Ship Canal was removed by conventional demolition methods, while the land spans were taken down with explosives.

Under an agreement with INDOT, the crossing was replaced with a tolled bridge through a public-private partnership involving United Bridge Partners, FIGG Bridge Companies, Lane Construction Corp., and American Infrastructure MLP funds. 1 10 11 12 Ground was broken in May 2016, although slag and groundwater problems delayed full construction until June 2017. 14 The present Cline Avenue Bridge was then built and opened to traffic on December 23, 2020, at a cost of $140 million. 1 12 14

The new bridge is a precast segmental box-girder structure with a 100-foot apex and a 6,236-foot main crossing, connecting to an existing 2,400-foot steel beam bridge, for a total length of 1.7 miles. 12 It is supported by 28 cast-in-place concrete piers and 685 post-tensioned single-cell box-girder segments ranging from nine to 14 feet in height. The segments were cast indoors in an on-site facility and erected using the balanced cantilever method. Construction used 2.6 million linear feet of post-tensioning strand, 14,473 tons of black reinforcing bar, and 16,811 tons of epoxy-coated reinforcing bar.

Gallery

Details

  • State: Indiana
  • Route: Cline Avenue
  • Status: Active (Automobile)
  • Type: Box Girder
  • Total Length: 6,260' (1983); 6'236' (2020)
  • Main Span Length: 315'
  • Deck Width: 105' (1983); 46' (2020)
  • Height of Structure: 100' (2020)

Sources

  1. “Background.” Cline Avenue Bridge.
  2. Fegaras, Angie. “INDOT Recommends Permanent Closure of SR 912 (Cline Avenue) Bridge.” Indiana Department of Transportation, 28 Dec. 2009.
  3. Davich, Jerry. “It Was Chaos, Mass Chaos.” Chicago Tribune, 1 Apr. 2007.
  4. “Bridge Ramp Falls, Kills 12 at E. Chicago; 18 are injured.” Indianapolis Star, 16 Apr. 1982.
  5. Bannon, Timothy, and Ruth Ann Krause. “A Times Special Report: The bridge collapse.”The Times of Northwest Indiana, 16 Apr. 1982.
  6. Bingham, Joshua. “SR 912 (Cline Avenue) Bridge Closed to All Traffic.” Indiana Department of Transportation, 13 Nov. 2009.
  7. Benman, Keith. “Cline Avenue Bridge Will Be Demolished.” The Times of Northwest Indiana, 29 Dec. 2009.
  8. Tweh, Bowdeya, and Marisa Kwiatkowski. “Cline Avenue Bridge won’t be rebuilt: Proposal would combine Dickey, Riley Roads Across Canal and Back to Cline.” The Times of Northwest Indiana, 16 Apr. 2010.
  9. Benman, Keith. “Portion of Cline Avenue Reopens in One Direction.” The Times of Northwest Indiana, 2 Nov. 2010.
  10. Benman, Keith. “Cline Bridge Turnover Deadline Looms.” The Times of Northwest Indiana, 19 Aug. 2012.
  11. Puente, Michael. “Cline Avenue Bridge to Be Rebuilt as Toll Road.” WBEZ-FM, 16 May 2012.
  12. “Cline Avenue Bridge.” The Ironworker. Sept. 2021. Vol 121 Issue No. 8. pp. 4-7.
  13. “Part of Cline bridge opens.” The Times of Northwest Indiana, 25 Oct. 1983, p. A-14.
  14. Steele, Andrew. “New Cline Avenue Bridge scheduled to open in 2019.” The Times of Northwest Indiana, 15 Jun. 2017, pp. A1-A5.

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