Gosh I first first reported on Piedmont Triad International Airport’s proposed taxiway back in 2012—-doesn’t seem that long. Now–not quite four years later—the taxiway is finally ready to take shape:
PTI Executive Director Kevin Baker said he made it a mission to get that bridge built.
Companies wouldn’t look twice at the land without runway access, Baker said. “It’s easier to go pick a flat site in Wichita.”
So he went to civic groups, elected officials, government transportation officials — anybody he could find to talk about what an asset the airport could be if it only had that bridge.
“Dammit,” he would tell them, “we’ve got to get that space open. We want to be ready to say ‘yes.’?”
The construction had been scheduled for this year at the earliest. But through political arm twisting and negotiations, local officials persuaded DOT to start construction of the road and the bridge in 2014.
The bridge must be wide, strong and perfectly level. Planes don’t travel on an incline. Period.
So beginning April 11, crews will use a crane to begin laying 165 girders to hold those planes. They’ll cast a concrete roadbed on top of that. And once the airport completes access taxiways beside the runways, it will be ready to cut through the dirt to the bridge — an overpass for jumbo jets.
“People got so tired of me … pounding my fist saying, ‘We need to build this bridge,’?” Baker said. “To see it coming out of the ground is one of the coolest things in my professional life.”
I travel Bryan Boulevard/NC 68/ I-73 quite a bit running my weekly errands. It will indeed be cool –and strange –to see an airplane making its way over and across the highway.
