The city of Danville and the Virginia Department of Transportation will hold a ceremonial opening of the Robertson Bridge at 10 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 20. The ceremony will be held adjacent the bridge in the parking lot of Danville Stadium Cinemas on Riverside Drive.
Mayor Sherman Saunders and Mark Peake, Lynchburg District representative to the Commonwealth Transportation Board, are among the scheduled speakers.
The bridge provides three southbound lanes – two of which will turn left onto Memorial Drive and one that will turn right – and two northbound lanes flanked by a pedestrian/bicycle lane.
By the day of the ceremony, it is expected that all of the bridge lanes will be open for travel, but work may not be complete at the new median established as part of the reconfigured intersection of the bridge and Memorial Drive.
The bridge project replaces a two-lane bridge that carried about 20,000 vehicles a day. The heavy volume of travel often caused traffic to back up during morning and evening rush hours.
Construction on the bridge project began in June 2010.
