Galena bridge project underway in April

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

The 200-foot con­tin­u­ous steel beam bridge over Big Wal­nut Creek lead­ing out of the east side of the Vil­lage of Galena to Sun­bury Road and points south, affec­tion­ately known to civil engi­neers as DEL-CR30, is more than 50 years old and struc­turally defi­cient. The Delaware County Engineer’s Office web­site describes the span “… in fair struc­tural con­di­tion with notable dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the steel beam super­struc­ture and con­crete deck.”

To put it in layman’s terms, the bridge needs com­plete reha­bil­i­ta­tion or replace­ment, and the county engi­neer has deemed the bridge a high pri­or­ity project to ensure that ade­quate trans­porta­tion is main­tained in the area. A reha­bil­i­ta­tion option was taken off the table because the exist­ing bridge foun­da­tions would not pro­vide enough sup­port for the addi­tional width needed on the bridge; and the amount of widen­ing that could be done on the exist­ing sub­struc­ture isn’t enough for the safe move­ment of vehi­cles and pedestrians.

An approx­i­mately $2 mil­lion com­pete bridge replace­ment was designed and has already been bid out; Com­plete Gen­eral Con­struc­tion got the con­tract with con­struc­tion on the 180-day project sched­uled to begin in April.

Project man­ager Rob Reilly, Chief Deputy Engi­neer with the county engineer’s office, said dur­ing the project’s design phase that staff mem­bers in his office and with design con­sul­tant EMH&T looked at a num­ber of ways to try to main­tain traf­fic in two direc­tions across the bridge dur­ing construction.

Accord­ing to the project’s page on the engineer’s web­site there was no way to fea­si­bly main­tain two-way traf­fic dur­ing con­struc­tion because of the high vol­ume of traf­fic that uses the bridge; and if the bridge were far­ther away from the inter­sec­tion, and there was dis­tance for traf­fic to queue on the approaches, it might have been pos­si­ble to oper­ate the bridge one lane at a time with a tem­po­rary traf­fic sig­nal, although it would still have caused long delays dur­ing peak travel hours.


The design that Com­plete Gen­eral signed on to com­plete included leav­ing a one-way lane on the old bridge open lead­ing into the vil­lage from Sun­bury Road, traf­fic out of the vil­lage towards Sun­bury Road would be detoured; dri­vers could come into the vil­lage using the bridge, but would use another route leav­ing the village.

Most Galena res­i­dents and busi­ness own­ers were pre­pared to live with that incon­ve­nience – until Riley emailed Galena Vil­lage Admin­is­tra­tor Jeanna Bur­rell and asked Bur­rell to get everyone’s opin­ion on a com­pete bridge closure.

“The plan is designed to have a one direc­tion clo­sure, but we recently received a pro­posal from the con­trac­tor to close the entire bridge,” Riley said dur­ing a phone inter­view last week. “Clos­ing the bridge entirely would reduce con­struc­tion time from six months to four months; and we’ve emailed vil­lage offi­cials and other con­cerned par­ties seek­ing their opinions.”

Late last week, two par­ties responded to inquiries about the impact of a full bridge clo­sure on their oper­a­tions – Mud­flats Bar & Grill owner Jane White, and Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict Trans­porta­tion Super­vi­sor Ron McClure.

In an email she sent to Riley, White said a one-way bridge lead­ing into Galena would deter com­merce, as any rea­son­able detour out of the vil­lage would be incon­ve­nient for her cus­tomers who live just across that bridge. She also said the speed of the bridge project does not con­cern her and other Galena busi­ness own­ers as much as the ongo­ing acces­si­bil­ity to their busi­nesses, their liveli­hoods and the liveli­hoods of their employees.



“The months you are propos­ing the bridge to be closed are some of the high­est vol­ume months for our restau­rant,” White wrote. “In addi­tion to the loss of busi­ness dur­ing the clo­sure, our guests would be chang­ing their din­ing habits, which could greatly dete­ri­o­rate our future business.”

McClure said a com­plete bridge clo­sure would, in his words, dev­as­tate the school district’s trans­porta­tion department.

“With the buses we have on the road today we couldn’t get all of our stu­dents to school on time,” McClure said. “We would have to put at least seven more buses on the road. When you add in fuel, the peo­ple to drive those buses at 6.5 hours per day start­ing in April of this school year and the start of next year, it adds up to a huge hard­ship on the school district.”

While McClure was unable to offer a firm cost to his trans­porta­tion depart­ment of a full bridge clo­sure with­out esti­mat­ing the cost of get­ting older reserve buses road-ready, fuel costs, wages and fringe ben­e­fits, and added lia­bil­ity insur­ance costs, he said he was com­fort­able say­ing that the closure’s cost to the dis­trict when school buses would be on the road dur­ing the bridge replace­ment project – April, May, and the first week of June, the sec­ond half of August and through Sep­tem­ber – would eas­ily exceed $100,000.

“We’re not set up finan­cially to han­dle a bur­den like that with our lean bud­get,” McClure said.

Riley said staff at the county engineer’s office and with Com­plete Gen­eral Con­tract­ing under­stands that either a one-way bridge clo­sure or a full bridge clo­sure would have a very real impact on the trav­el­ing pub­lic and school buses.

“We don’t take these kind of deci­sions lightly by any means,” Riley said. “That’s why we’re seek­ing input, and why no deci­sions have been made yet. But a deci­sion will have to be made soon if con­struc­tion is going to begin on sched­ule in April.”

Posted by Gary Henery on Mar 6 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.