CLEVELAND, Ohio — The West 117th Street Rapid station returns to service Friday, 13 months after closing for a major reconstruction project that replaced three aging bridges and gave the busy Red Line platform a significant facelift.

The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority spent $8.6 million on the work, which included rebuilding side-by-side bridges for westbound and eastbound tracks, plus the station platform between.

The spans, which date to the mid-1950s, carry trains over West 117th Street at the Cleveland-Lakewood border.

“This project is going to extend the life of the bridges,” said Michael Schipper, RTA’s deputy general manager of engineering and project management. “It gives us a new platform. We also designed the platform so it will be easy to modify when the new rai

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