New $1B I-55 Bridge to Transform Memphis Traffic & Freight Flow

A Parsons Transportation Group Inc. rendering of one of the concepts for the new I-55 bridge (Image provided by the Tennessee Department of Transportation)

Three funding paths converged recently to free up nearly a billion dollars for a new bridge over the Mississippi at Memphis. Construction could start late next year.

Plans for a wider, modern bridge at one of the nation’s busiest multimodal transport hubs have circulated for decades. But new federal and state funding sources accelerated the effort to replace the oldest bridge in the nation’s interstate system: the 75-year-old Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, opened in December 1949.

The new bridge, grandly named America’s River Crossing, will carry Interstate 55 about a mile-and-a-half between Memphis and West Memphis. It will ease the flow of traffic and goods through a region that’s home to Federal Express, the country’s busiest freight airport and major multimodal crossroads.

The four-year building project carries an $800 million to $900 million budget, with $400 million in funding from the 2021 Infrastructure & Jobs Act.

“We’ll put together around $400 million we’re getting from the federal government and team with Arkansas for up to $250 million each to build an iconic structure,” Tennessee Department of Transportation Director Butch Eley said.

Arkansas Department of Transportation Director Jared Wiley said the project wouldn’t have been possible without the support of Arkansans, who voted in 2020 to make permanent a half-cent sales tax for highway and bridge construction.

“We couldn’t do this without Tennessee, and likewise, they couldn’t without us,” Wiley told Arkansas Business in a telephone interview. “We couldn’t do this if it weren’t for the voters voting in Amendment 101 back in 2020 and giving us a stable source of revenue for the future. Without that infusion, we’d have to save up a lot longer to try to tackle a project of this size. We want the people of Arkansas to know we appreciate them.”

Tennessee is shouldering its share through Gov. Bill Lee’s 2023 Transportation Modernization Act, which included a one-time $3.3 billion subsidy from the state’s General Fund to address lagging state and local transportation priorities.

“Over the last 20 years, both the Tennessee and Arkansas Departments of Transportation have been conducting studies over this crossing of I-55 and potential alternative crossings,” Tennessee DOT Regional Communications Officer Nichole Lawrence said. “The recommendation … was a replacement of the existing 75-year-old bridge.”

The current I-55 bridge has a noble history (See sidebar), but it is too small to handle the 48,000 cars, trucks and semis that cross it each day. It has two 11-foot-wide traffic lanes each way, with shoulders as tight as 6 inches in some parts.

The new bridge deck will have two 12-foot lanes and an additional “auxiliary lane” in each direction, with 12-foot shoulders. The new deck will be 131 feet wide, compared with the current deck’s 64 feet, 9 inches. The new design will accommodate 64,000 vehicles per day.

‘Unprecedented Investment’

“This unprecedented investment in Memphis marks the single-largest transportation investment in Tennessee state history and will be transformative for our infrastructure,” Lee said in announcing the project last year. “The new I-55 bridge will not only enhance safety and efficiency but also improve multimodal connectivity and strengthen our economic vitality by facilitating smoother freight movement and improving accessibility in our region.”

The nation got a reminder of how crucial Mississippi River crossings can be when a crack discovered in steel supporting the deck of Memphis’ Hernando de Soto Bridge diverted Interstate 40 traffic to the I-55 bridge in late 2021. Delays and traffic jams followed.

“The foremost thing is that the [I-55] bridge is 75 years old,” Wiley said. “It carries a lot of people across a critical link in the infrastructure. When we saw the issue with the I-40 bridge a few years ago, it really underscored the importance of that corridor, and the need to make sure that we have adequate redundancy.”

The new bridge will improve earthquake resilience and relieve burdensome maintenance and rehabilitation costs required by the old bridge, Lawrence said.

Kiewit, Parsons

Kiewit Infrastructure South of Westlake, Texas, which headed up the 30 Crossing bridge project in Little Rock, will be the general contractor for the Memphis bridge. Parsons Transportation Group Inc. of Peachtree Corners, Georgia, is handling design and engineering.

“Parsons is in the middle of getting environmental clearance through the National Environmental Policy Act,” said Keli Wylie, ARDOT’s assistant chief engineer for program delivery. “They’re hoping to get that done in the next couple of months, and they’re wanting to see some construction work ongoing by maybe the end of 2026 or the beginning of 2027.” Construction will take “between three and four years,” she said.

Wylie said Kiewit has vast experience in large infrastructure projects nationwide, particularly in the construction manager-general contractor delivery method. “That method is really about early involvement,” she said. “We bring the contractor in on the front end, together with the designers, to work together and optimize how we build a project. They’re a leader around the country, and we’ve had great success with them here in Arkansas.”

No final design has been chosen, but plans call for a cable-stay bridge “very similar to the Greenville Bridge,” Wylie said. That bridge, which crosses the river from Mississippi to south Arkansas, opened in 2010 and features cables descending from two concrete 425-foot towers. The Memphis bridge could have either two or three towers, but the final design will take care to accommodate river barge and boat traffic in distinct channels below.

“The length we have to span and the navigational channel of the river is going to push us to a bridge like that,” Wiley said. “It’s just the most economical and feasible type of design for an application like this.”

The Mississippi carries much heavier barge traffic than the Arkansas River does at Little Rock, requiring an approach different from 30 Crossing, Wiley said.

Budget Challenge?

He hopes to bring in the project at $800 million, but “there was some contingency built in,” Wiley said. “We see construction cost estimates fluctuate. Our partners in Tennessee handled that estimate. But we’re pretty confident that the contractor that was selected can get us there on budget. They have a history of doing that across the nation.”

Wiley does worry about potential effects from new tariffs.

“We’re always keeping an eye on anything that could impact our bottom line, and we don’t know exactly yet what the tariffs are going to look like,” he said. “Some people think we might see some initial price increases that would then maybe flatten out. That’s what I’m hoping for.”

But if costs escalate steeply, “we’re going to have to think about what that does for us,” Wiley said. “ARDOT stretches every dollar as far as we can, and we’ve committed up to $250 million to match the federal grant on this project. So if we see this thing escalate too much, we’re going to have to stop and think about when we can deliver it. We’ll have to think about, do we delay this, or do we delay other projects.”

The ‘Old Bridge,’ Steeped in Song and History

The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge was already 10 years old when Chuck Berry referenced it in “Memphis, Tennessee” in 1959. It was four years older than Marie, the little girl the song’s narrator was trying to reach long-distance.

“Her home is on the south side, high up on a ridge, just a half-a-mile from the Mississippi Bridge,” Berry sang, using just one of the bridge’s alternate names. Memphis natives often call it “the old bridge,” as opposed to the newer Hernando de Soto Bridge upstream, and it’s a descriptive nickname.

At 75, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge is the oldest span in the national interstate system. It carries Interstate 55 over the mighty river, and landed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001. When it opened in December 1949, Harry Truman was president, Sid McMath was governor of Arkansas, Gordon Browning was governor of Tennessee and Hank Williams was, at 26, a rising country music star.

Planning had begun a decade earlier with a two-state planning commission led by famed Memphis power broker E.H. “Boss” Crump. The bridge interchange on the Tennessee side is at E.H. Crump Boulevard.

The Arkansas Highway Commission and Tennessee’s Department of Highway & Public Works hired Modjeski & Masters, founded by renowned bridge-builder Ralph Modjeski, to put up the new bridge. Modjeski had designed the 1916 Harahan Bridge and helped design the 1882 original locomotive span at Memphis, the Frisco Bridge. All three bridges cross the river side by side, and the new bridge, dubbed “America’s River Crossing,” will be built just to the south of the current interstate bridge, which will be demolished.

Modjeski had died in 1940, but his firm carried on. Construction on the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge began in September 1945, weeks after World War II ended. It opened to traffic four years and three months later.

The three bridges all have through-truss architecture, even though that design had fallen from favor by the time the Memphis & Arkansas was built. But heavy barge traffic on the river below largely dictated that the main span of the planned bridge essentially match the navigation channel established by the previous bridges.

The new design is radically different: a cable-stayed concept with two or three towers, depending on final decisions. It will be much wider, with three traffic lanes and two shoulders per side. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge has two lanes of traffic each way, and in some sections, no shoulders.

The three-tower concept would include four spans, and the two-tower approach could yield either three or four spans.