State makes progress on bridges

Workers install a temporary steel bridge on Route 30 in Jamaica. AOT officials say the bridge will open by Oct. 15.

Christian Avard / Staff Photo

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By Christian Avard
Staff Writer – Published: September 29, 2011

JAMAICA — Vermont Agency of Transportation officials said Tuesday temporary bridges are being installed on routes 30 and 100 in Jamaica and those roads will reopen to traffic in October.

Secretary of Transportation Brian Searles said several southern Vermont bridges were lost during Tropical Storm Irene last month. Many of them cannot be repaired by winter so the state turned to temporary bridges as an alternative.

Searles said AOT is working around the clock to install the bridges.

“Some people conclude that ‘temporary (bridges)’ means it’s an easy installation. Keep in mind, these bridges have to accomplish the same thing as the permanent bridges …” Searles said. “They’re not easy projects. They take a certain amount of design, engineering, contractors have to be in place.”

Searles and other Transportation officials were in Jamaica as contractors installed a 130-foot bridge on Route 30, where flooding from Ball Mountain Brook wiped out a 1936 bridge. According to Kristin Higgins, the AOT structures project manager, the bridge was built on a skeletal abutment and carried its weight on two legs. One of the legs gave way and the bridge failed. The cost to replace the bridge is $630,000.

“The bridge is 10 feet longer than (the old one). There’s no intermediate pier like before and we opened up the waterway quite a bit. It’s much safer than the bridge that was here,” Higgins said.

A 170-foot bridge is being installed on Route 100. The pier of that bridge was undermined by West River flooding and caused considerable damage. The cost to replace it is $490,000.

“It’s still standing but cockeyed and unsafe. The pier has already settled

Article source: http://feeds.stateline.org/~r/StatelineorgRss-Transportation/~3/msfrAYeFV3I/709299887