Scott Air Force Base Taxiway Bridge

Details
Location: Belleville, Ill.
Service: Bridge design
Project Cost: $12.9 million
Client: TAMS Consultants Inc.
Owner: St. Clair County
Completed: 1997

Description
To accommodate increasing air traffic in the metropolitan St. Louis area, a new airport was constructed adjacent to Scott Air Force Base. A unique aspect of this project is that the airport is a joint-use facility, used by the U.S. Air Force, Illinois National Guard and civilians.

Services
Hanson reviewed the preliminary design criteria and completed the final design.

To connect the joint-use airport to Scott Air Force Base, two bridges were required to carry the cross-over taxiway over the Silver Creek floodplain. The bridges and taxiway were constructed to enable fully loaded airplanes to move between the Air Force base and the new 10,000-foot runway at MidAmerica Airport.

Both bridges have three spans plus two approach spans and are 317 feet long. At the time of their construction, they were the longest known airplane bridges in the United States. The 149-foot-wide bridges were designed to support a 1.25 million-pound aircraft.