Indiana State Road 912

State Road 912
Cline Avenue Highway Construction Workers Memorial Highway[1]
Route information
Maintained by INDOT
Length:	11.69 mi[2] (18.81 km)
Major junctions
West end:	I-90 / Ind. Toll Rd. in Hammond
	US 12 in Gary, SR 312 I-90 / Ind. Toll Rd. in Gary US 20 in Gary, I-80 / I-94 / US 6 Borman Expressway in Gary
South end:	US 6 Bus. in Griffith
Highway system
Indiana roads Interstates • U.S. Routes • State Roads • Former ← SR 827 SR 930 →

State Road 912, known along its entire length as Cline Avenue, is a freeway north of the Borman Expressway (Interstates 80-94 & U.S. Route 6), and a local access road serving Griffith south of the Borman. The portion of Cline Avenue marked as SR 912 is 11.69 miles (18.81 km) long.^[2] Indiana 912 can be considered a child route of U.S. Route 12.

On April 15, 1982, part of a ramp under construction collapsed during concrete pouring operations near the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal, killing twelve highway workers and injuring eighteen more. In 1987, the state designated the route between US 12 and the Indiana Toll Road as the Highway Construction Workers Memorial Highway.

On December 28, 2009, the Indiana Department of Transportation closed the elevated bridge portion of Cline Avenue between Calumet Avenue and Michigan Avenue, a distance of nearly 3.5 miles (5.6 km). Corrosion had severely weakened most elements of the bridge, including the bridge piers, concrete, beams and cables. The bridge is to be torn down.^[3] Similar cases of corrosion have been identified in other bridges across the country.^[4]

Route description

The freeway runs east from exit 3 of the Indiana Toll Road past the Gary/Chicago International Airport, and then south, also having an interchange with Toll Road exit 10. This portion also serves several of the steel mills (many now owned by Mittal Steel Company) and casinos in East Chicago and Gary, Indiana. The north–south portion between approximately US 20 and the Borman Expressway follows the border between Gary and Hammond, Indiana.

South of the Borman Expressway, Cline Avenue becomes a 4-lane divided highway. Indiana 912 extends south 1 mi (2 km) to Ridge Road (Business US 6).

History

A ramp to SR 912 collapsed on April 15, 1982 during construction while workers were pouring concrete

Before the construction of the expressway, portions of Truck Route 912 were on Kennedy Avenue. 5.7 miles (9.2 km) of new expressway from the Toll Road to Chicago Avenue was constructed at a cost of $250 million (1982, $551 million in 2008).^[5] Most of the expressway portion followed the path of the former Pennsylvania Railroad main line from Chicago to Pittsburgh via Fort Wayne, rationalized by Conrail onto the parallel former New York Central main line.

Ramp collapse

On April 15, 1982, fourteen workers were killed and eighteen injured when falsework beneath a ramp failed during a concrete pour.^[6] At 10:40 am, Unit 4, one of the bridge sections, collapsed, destroying the scaffold stairway and stranding workers on the remaining sections above. Workers on the Unit 4 were crushed to death when the section flipped and landed upside-down while descending due to tension in the cables.^[5]

Surviving construction workers brought in a cherry picker to rescue the remaining workers stranded on the ramp, but five minutes after the initial collapse, Unit 5, the neighboring section, also collapsed. Twelve workers in total were killed instantly; a thirteenth died two weeks after the collapse, and the fourteenth worker died of injuries suffered during the collapse two years later. The accident remains Indiana's deadliest industrial or construction accident in its history.^[5]

Investigators from the National Bureau of Standards for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) discovered several errors that caused the collapse of the bridge section. The most likely cause of the collapse was "the cracking of a concrete pad supporting a leg of the shoring towers." The failure of the concrete pad, built too thin, led to another finding; 1 inch (2.5 cm) bolts that were supposed to connect key stringers to cross-beams instead were replaced with frictional clips, but investigators did not find any documentation that supported this substitution. Investigators could not locate any engineering calculations supporting the pads as designed; worse, the pads were built substandard to the undocumented design.^[5]

Lawsuits against companies involved in building the ramp were settled out of court, as no single party could be found to explain the discrepancies. The bridge finally opened in 1986. In 1987, the overpass on the section between Inland Steel and Riley Road was renamed the "Highway Workers Memorial Highway," in memory of the workers.^[1][5]

Sniper investigation

During the summer of 2006, numerous drivers reported possible attacks by a sniper on the eastern portion of Cline Avenue. Drivers reported having their windows and windshields shattered by unknown projectiles. Investigators, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, suspected an assailant armed with a slingshot or a BB gun was shooting out windows. Others suspected the broken windows were due to flying gravel and abnormally warm temperatures. The shootings were not related to an earlier July 25 shooting death of a motorist on Interstate 65 south of Indianapolis. No arrests were ever made in the case, and the shootings ended around the beginning of the school year.^[7]

Bridge closure & Partial Reopen

On November 13, 2009, the Indiana Department of Transportation closed the bridge portion over the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal (equivalent to the portions of the road between exits 1 and 5A) to all traffic after consultants released details of an inspection on the bridge, citing safety concerns equivalent to the August 2007 I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis.^[8]

On December 28, 2009 INDOT announced that the bridge will remain permanently closed and ultimately demolished at a future date to be determined. There are no immediate plans to build a new bridge in its place, as INDOT claims the $90 million expense for a new bridge for 30,000 vehicles per day is not justifiable. Instead, INDOT is focusing on upgrading the roadways being used as a detour around the bridge to handle the added traffic.^[4] On April 15, 2010, INDOT announced its plan to demolish the bridge and reroute traffic via Riley and Dickey Roads.^[9]

On November 2, 2010 INDOT reopen the westbound lanes of Cline Ave. from Riley Road to the Indiana Toll Road reopen to traffic, as INDOT is awaiting results of an environmental impact study to determine if the eastbound lanes should be reopened. While the ramp from westbound Riley Road to Cline Ave. has reopened crews are demolishing the eastbound ramp from Cline Ave to Riley Road as it was found to be structurally unsound.^[10]

Exit list

The entire route is in Lake County.

Location	Mile[2]	#	Destinations	Notes
Hammond	0.00		I-90 / Ind. Toll Rd. – Chicago Skyway	Northern/Western end of freeway
	0.81	1	US 41 (Calumet Avenue)	Temporary Eastbound End 11-13-2009, Westbound Reopen 11-2-2010
East Chicago	2.75	3	Riley Road to US 12 (Indianapolis Boulevard) / US 20	Closed 11-13-2009 Eastbound, Westbound Entrance Reopen 11-2-2010.[11]
	4.33	5A	Michigan Avenue	Closed west of this exit 11-13-2009
	4.48	5B	Inland Steel Plant 2, E.B. Jeorse Park, Pastrick Marina	Exit to Resorts East Chicago Casino.[12]
	4.86	5C	Jeorse Park, Pastrick Marina	Westbound exit only. Exit to Resorts East Chicago Casino.[12]
Gary[13]	5.26	6A	US 12 west (Columbus Drive) / SR 312 (Chicago Avenue)	Southbound exit, northbound entrance
	5.62	6B	Industrial Highway	Southbound exit, northbound entrance. Formerly eastbound U.S. 12.
	5.94	6	US 12 (Columbus Drive, Industrial Highway)	Northbound exit, southbound entrance. Northbound access to SR 312.
	7.14	7	Gary Avenue to I-90 / Ind. Toll Rd. – Chicago, Ohio
Hammond and Gary[13]	8.10	8	US 20 (Michigan Street, 5th Avenue) to US 12
	9.16	9	169th Street, 15th Avenue
	10.41	10	I-80 / I-94 / US 6 – Chicago, Detroit	Southern/Eastern end of freeway
Highland & Griffith	11.69		US 6 Bus. (Ridge Road)	No Trucks over 8 tons allow Westbound

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Indiana Department of Transportation (1987). "INDOT: Memorial Highways and Bridges". http://www.in.gov/indot/3005.htm. Retrieved 2008-04-16. 
2. ^ ^{a b c} Indiana Department of Transportation (2004). "LaPorte District Roadway Referencing System". http://www.in.gov/indot/files/Laporte_2004.pdf. Retrieved 2008-04-16. 
3. ^ Indiana Department of Transportation (2009-12-28). "INDOT Recommends Permanent Closure of S.R. 912 (Cline Avenue) Bridge". http://www.in.gov/portal/news_events/49382.htm. Retrieved 2010-01-03. 
4. ^ ^{a b} Keith Benman (December 29, 2009). "Cline Avenue bridge will be demolished". The Times of Northwest Indiana. http://nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/article_ce4be47a-f3e4-11de-8028-001cc4c002e0.html. Retrieved 2010-01-01. 
5. ^ ^{a b c d e} Davich, Jerry (2007-04-01). "It was chaos, mass chaos". Chicago Tribune. http://www.atssa.com/galleries/default-file/Chicago_Tribune.pdf. Retrieved 2009-11-14. 
6. ^ Unknown (1982-04-16). "Bridge ramp falls, kills 12 at E. Chicago; 18 are injured". The Indianapolis Star. http://www.in.gov/indot/5046.htm. Retrieved 2008-04-16. ^{[dead link]}
7. ^ Maxwell, Tonya and Huppke, Rex W. (2006-08-08). "Even weather a suspect in Indiana 'sniper' case". Chicago Tribune. http://docs.newsbank.com/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:sid/iw.newsbank.com:NewsBank:CTRB&rft_val_format=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&rft_dat=11361B3CCC9C35E0&svc_dat=InfoWeb:aggregated5&req_dat=AA98CDC331574F0ABEAFF732B33DC0B2. Retrieved 2008-05-02. 
8. ^ Indiana Department of Transportation (2009-11-13). "S.R. 912 (Cline Avenue) bridge closed to all traffic". http://www.in.gov/portal/news_events/43977.htm. Retrieved 2009-11-13. 
9. ^ Bowdeya Tweh and Marisa Kwiatkowski (April 16, 2010). "State: Cline Avenue Bridge won't be rebuilt: Proposal would combine Dickey, Riley roads across canal and back to Cline". The Times of Northwest Indiana. http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/article_05eff6e3-9d6e-56b5-a51d-7ed96f352568.html. Retrieved same date. 
10. ^ Northwest Indiana Times (2010). "Portion of Cline Avenue reopens in one direction". http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/article_b8bc1e3d-48f3-5ea2-b573-c6288feca606.html. Retrieved 2010-11-02. 
11. ^ Northwest Indiana Times (2010). "Portion of Cline Avenue reopens in one direction". http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/article_b8bc1e3d-48f3-5ea2-b573-c6288feca606.html. Retrieved 2010-11-02. 
12. ^ ^{a b} Resorts East Chicago (2008). "Directions to Resorts East Chicago". http://www.resortseastchicago.com/directions.shtml. Retrieved 2008-04-17. 
13. ^ ^{a b} The Tiger Map Server Browser shows the city line along the pre-freeway alignment of Cline Avenue. South of the Indiana Toll Road interchange, this is the current alignment of SR 912, as can be confirmed on Google Maps. North of the S-curve at the Toll Road, the southbound frontage road is the old Cline Avenue and the city line, so those interchanges are completely in Gary.