Joliet’s Ruby St. bridge closing Thursday for repairs

The Ruby Street bridge project is on again, and the bridge is scheduled to close Thursday but now only for a week.

The bridge in downtown Joliet had been scheduled to close Monday for the rest of the year. That plan changed, however, as the Illinois Department of Transportation needed to coordinate the bridge work with city road projects underway downtown.

“It’s going to be done in two stages,” Illinois Department of Transportation spokeswoman Maria Castaneda said Tuesday of the Ruby Street bridge upgrades.

The work that starts Thursday is very dependent on weather, and IDOT wants to get it done early, Castaneda said.

The start date has not yet been set for the next phase of the project, which likely would close the bridge for a couple of months.

On Thursday, work crews will begin installing aerial cables to equip the bridge for remote control as IDOT moves bridge tenders from individual drawbridges to a central Joliet location. The additional upgrades that will close the bridge again are likely to start later this year, IDOT said.