The new Champlin Slough Bridge along State Route 99E in Tehama County was done with Accelerated Bridge Construction technologies.
By Kurt Villavicencio
District 2 public information officer
Commuters have been crossing over the Champlin Slough Bridge, one of Tehama County’s oldest commuter structures for over a century.
This bridge has provided a connection among the communities of Red Bluff, Los Molinos and Chico along State Route 99E for generations. It has carried cars, trucks, horses, buggies, tractors and just about anything you can think of over the Champlin Slough.
Like every structure, this bridge had a life span and Caltrans District 2 project manager Javed Iqbal was tasked with one of the most important (and highly visible) bridge replacement projects in Northern California. This project was particularly unique among the many structure projects throughout the district.
“This project is unique because we used Accelerated Bridge Construction technologies to reduce the impact to the traveling public by reducing the number of working days from six months to six weeks,” Iqbal said. “This reduction in working days greatly reduced the exposure of public traffic, field construction workers, and our staff to the construction zone traffic safety hazards and resulted in zero traffic-related injuries on the job.
“The environmental, utility, and private land impacts were also greatly reduced by closing SR-99E and thus avoiding the need to construct a temporary detour bridge beside the existing bridge.”
No detour bridge and the closure of a major North State route are added obstacles for any Caltrans team. From the beginning planning stages in 2016, to the completion of the new replacement bridge during the summer of 2022, the Champlin Slough Bridge Replacement presented challenges few other projects in the district encompassed.
“Traffic management and public awareness were the biggest challenges during this project. Caltrans PIO, District 2 Construction and Traffic Management did a tremendous job keeping the public informed and up to date as the project progressed through the six-week construction period,” Iqbal said. “Keeping the local transportation agencies and emergency responders up to date was another challenge that demanded great teamwork.”
It has been a complete team effort to complete the bridge replacement ahead of Tehama County’s busy construction season in 2023. Despite the challenges of replacing a bridge in the middle of one of the most traveled district corridors, Iqbal looks back at this project with gratitude.
“I’d like to take this opportunity to relay my appreciation to the team for their amazing dedication and coordination to overcome the challenges and make this project another success story,” Iqbal said. “It takes the whole team to create a success story. I’d like to thank the key team members that worked on this project that made it such an accomplishment. It’s been one of the more impressive engineering feats we’ve pulled off here in District 2.”