BRIDGE
REPAIRS
MoDOT Plans Livingston County
Bridge Work for 2020
By Angie Talken,
CT 06 06 19
The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) has announced that plans are underway to replace the decks of both the U.S. Highway 65 Grand River and Route 190 Thompson River bridges near Chillicothe.
Rick Orr, transportation project manager with MoDOT, said the projects call for two separate jobs.
"Crews will be removing the existing concrete driving surface from both bridges
- and doing some repairs to the longitudinal girders and the cross bracing support and then will pour new bridge deck on both
structures," he said. "That should make them as close to
new as we can without refabricating any of the parts." MoDOT contracted with Garver
Inc. to design the new bridge decks. In August, the project will be open for bids. According to
Orr, during the September meeting of the Missouri Transportation and Highways Commission,
the project will be awarded to a bidder.
The U.S. Highway 65 Grand River Bridge was built in 1995, and it is believed as many as 1,780 vehicles cross the bridge daily. The bridge deck replacement project will help provide a smoother riding surface and bring bridge barriers and guardrail up to current standards. In February, Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe joined MoDOT crews at the bridge site as part of an announcement of Gov. Mike
Parson's Focus on Bridges project to repair or replace 250 of the bridges in the state of Missouri that have been determined to be in poor condition. During his visit to the Grand River Bridge, Kehoe told the crowd the bridge is on the list of 250 to be accelerated for repair. The purpose of the Focus on Bridges initiative is to allow MoDOT to catch-up a bit on the bridge projects.
It was also announced in February that the Thompson River Bridge on Highway 190, which was built in 1964,
will be repaired. There are an estimated 1,164 cars and trucks that cross the Thompson River Bridge each day.
"The bridge deck replacement project will help provide a smoother riding surface and bring bridge barriers and guardrail up to current
standards," Orr noted. "We do bridge inspections on all bridge structures every year and
we've known that there needed to be some repair to the super structure
- and MoDOT just hasn't had the ability to do them due to our asset management plans. But they have been programmed for this year and have been advanced due to the
governor's bridge program."
While bidding has not been completed, estimates are that each bridge will cost in excess of $1 million to repair. Orr also noted additional safety improvements will be completed both bridges, and there will not be a full closure of either bridge during the construction project.
"There will be no full bridge closure. We will have head-to-head traffic since there are two lanes on bridges currently
- in both directions," he said. Currently, the lanes on the bridges are larger than usual, and plans are to reduce the larger lane sizes so crews can work on half of the bridge and then traffic can still flow on the other half, with one lane going in each direction.
"It will be staged construction, basically - we will put traffic barrier close to middle of the bridge along the length of the bridge and traffic will be allowed to travel on the open side
- east and west on the Highway 190 bridge will have to take
turns, with a flagger, and will continue that way until the majority of work is done.
While work could begins early as November, Orr said that most bridge work is stopped by
December 1 for the winter season, so he anticipates crews will begin work on both bridges in March of 2020, completing the projects by December of the same year.
In addition to the bridge work on Highway 65, just south of the city limits, Orr said MoDOT will be,
"doing a little safety improvement on north side of 65 Bridge moving an access the city has next to pumping station further north so it is safer place to bring traffic on the highway and for traffic to turn off or onto the outer road. That will have to be done before they start the bridge work so traffic control remains
workable."
Work Underway on Route C
Bridge in Livingston County
May 17 2019 CT
According to a press release from the Missouri Department of Transportation
(MoDOT), repairs are now underway on the bridge on Livingston County Route C over Shoal Creek, just south of Utica.
Crews from the MoDOT closed the bridge on April 9, 2019, after a regularly scheduled inspection revealed critical deterioration to the structure. Flooding has caused some delay to the repair
work which began in earnest this week. MoDOT crews will be working to replace the old wood timber beams of the bridge with steel. The bridge is
expected to remain closed through June. Motorists are encouraged to use an alternate route during the
closure. The Shoal Creek Bridge was built in 1933 and carries approximately 310 vehicles a day.
All bridges throughout the United States are federally required to be inspected at least
every two years. MoDOT's Northwest District has more than 1,300 bridges among its 20 counties. This program of inspection, repair,
and maintenance of the more than 10,000 bridges across the state ensures the bridges are kept in the
best possible condition for as long as possible for those traveling across
Missouri's roadways.
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C-T, December 14 &
updated December 24, 2018
By Angie Talken
Bridge on County Road
LIV 222 - County Commissioner Ed Douglas said the bridge, which is less than 20 feet long, was recently inspected and was found to be unrepairable and dangerous to
drive on. Douglas and the commission immediately closed the bridge and
ordered a tube to replace the structure. For safety reasons, the
bridge located about one mile north of town and one mile east of Highway 65 on County Road
LIV 222 will remain closed for several weeks. Douglas said there are approximately 120 bridges in the
county which are more than 20 feet long and inspected annually by county crews and the Missouri Department of Transportation. There are approximately the same number of bridges under 20
feet; and while those are not all annually inspected, the bridge at
LIV 222 was recently noted to be in disrepair, prompting an inspection and subsequent bridge closure. Douglas says the small bridge on LIV 222 was replaced very quickly and only had
the road closed for a few days. He says they got lucky on finding a
tube - much faster than expected.
Bridge on County
Road LIV 235 - On December 20, 2018, the second Livingston County bridge opened in just a matter of days.
County Commissioner Ed Douglas said the new Livingston County Bridge on LIV 235, about a quarter of a mile south of West Third Street is now open. The new bridge is 60 feet long and about 28 feet wide. It replaces an old bridge that was in
"bad shape," according to Douglas. The old bridge was only about 14 feet wide and was subject to flooding. The new bridge is several feet higher, Douglas said the county crews started working on the bridge about three months ago,
but the work was interrupted by flooding. However, despite the interruption, the bridge was completed on time.
Douglas says they are glad to have these both done before the holidays. |