Final repairs will begin Monday morning on the Martin Olav Sabo bike bridge over Hiawatha Avenue in south Minneapolis, closing the span to all bicycle and pedestrian traffic until early December.
Support cables on the bridge broke loose in February; temporary repairs allowed the bridge to reopen earlier this summer.
The latest repairs will include workers installing and retrofitting several plates on the pylon where a pair of suspension cables broke loose when one of the plates fractured. An engineering firm hired to find the cause of the fracture concluded that wind-induced cable vibrations caused the plates to crack.
The replacement plates are designed to withstand the fatigue that caused the cracking on the 215-foot-long suspension bridge that opened in November 2007.
JIM ADAMS
