For some motorists passing by on the other bridge, it may be hard to tell, but Missouri's Transportation department said last week that repair work on the westbound bridge over the Missouri River is progressing steadily.
MoDOT spokeswoman Sally Oxenhandler told the News Tribune the work continues to find "additional structural steel issues and rusted rivets that are being addressed under the revised project scope."
Repainting and repairing the westbound bridge is a 16-month contract.
But MoDOT originally planned for closing the bridge to traffic for only 120 days, with the rest of the work being done even as vehicles were crossing the river on the bridge.
Officials at the end of July said that plan had been too optimistic because they were finding more rust spots needing to be repaired than expected originally.
MoDOT's state bridge engineer, Dennis Heckman, told reporters at a riverside news conference in July that engineers had expected to find some rust spots and rusty bolts that had not been counted in the original plans, because of the many pigeons that have made their homes underneath the bridge deck.
"When you blast the (paint and) pigeon droppings off, sometimes it's not so bad underneath, and you repaint it," Heckman said at the July 29 news conference. "And sometimes you blast the pigeon droppings off, and there's no steel left."
So MoDOT is taking the extra time necessary "while the bridge is closed to traffic (and) is nice and clean," Heckman said then. "If we didn't make these repairs now, we would be back in six months to a year, closing one lane at a time so we could make these repairs."
In July, MoDOT officials were hesitant to predict a re-opening date but hoped it would be late-September to mid-October.
On Friday, Oxenhandler told the News Tribune: "While we are still unable to commit to a firm date for reopening the bridge, we are hopeful we can get the bridge back open to traffic in late October or early November."
Even then, she noted, the contract still requires work to be done through next summer.
"Some additional work will continue that will require occasional lane closures" even after the westbound bridge is re-opened to traffic. "That work should be completed by spring of 2017."
The $7 million project began in April.
In 1998, a $9.2 million project that involved some work similar to the current project and also included replacing the bridge deck closed the bridge for six months.
Michael Ost with Saffo Contractors - the Wilmington, North Carolina, firm doing the current repair work - told the News Tribune last week: "The project is coming along well."
And Oxenhandler said: "The contractor is providing a quality product."