That piece would be the new 720-foot-long bridge that will carry traffic over six lanes of Interstate 5. The last structural component for the bridge was installed last week.

Envisioned since at least 2001, the project is the first of two that will provide a faster and more direct connection from the freeway to rapidly growing Battle Ground. A future project will widen Highway 502 between Duluth and the Battle Ground city limits. Not yet fully funded, it could start in 2012.

The $56.1 million interchange project is being built by Kerr Contractors of Woodburn, Ore. Construction began April 9, 2007, and is on schedule despite a month-and-a-half delay caused by last December’s storms.

The bridge will open sometime this fall, which would be earlier than the originally announced date of early 2009.

Now that the bridge is structurally complete, the focus turns to cosmetic work, including concrete finishing and painting, installing steel bridge railings, and working on the approach roads. Guardrails, barriers, illumination, signs, landscaping and final paving are some of the jobs that remain to be done there. It will take a couple of months to finish all of them.

However, the finishing work can be done with minimal impact to freeway traffic, so I-5 will be restored to three lanes in each direction, according to the WSDOT news release. It had been pinched to two lanes in each direction.

Some facts about the bridge project:

• The bridge contains more than 17 million pounds of concrete and 723,000 pounds of reinforcing steel.

• The bridge is supported by 324,500 pounds of steel piles.

• The bridge uses 32 precast “super” girders to span the wide freeway without extra supports. The unusually long girders were built in a factory and trucked to the construction site.

• The bridge itself cost only $6.2 million to build, about 20 percent of total project costs. The rest will be spent on road improvements and other costs.

• The project was built partially with money from the “It’s Your Nickel” gas tax hike of five cents per gallon approved by voters in 2003.

Craig Brown can be reached at craig.brown@columbian.com or 360-735-4514.