Traffic was so bad that there was a market for an alternative, the toll Rock Island Swing Bridge a few miles to the south.

The fractures were not believed to be a safety hazard, however it was thought that the degraded quality would diminish the expected 100-year effective life of the bridge by allowing salt and water to seep in.

Investigation revealed that at the time the bridge was designed, there were no published standards for how much load the concrete components could support.

The existing bridge was retrofitted by adding post-tensioned steel cables to transfer more of the load to the piers.

The design firm took responsibility for the $14.8 million cost to fix the problem and redesigned the future eastbound span.

The old Wakota Bridge was built using material fabricated by the United States Steel Corporation as one of the first segments of Interstate 494 by Ashbach Construction.

Temporary piers were built, then the old bridge was cut into manageable pieces which were lowered to waiting barges and hauled away.