Kenneth Hart/The Independent
Russell — First, the good news: The proposed Ironton-Russell Bridge project is still very much alive.
Now, the bad news: It’s going to be several years longer than originally planned before construction begins.
The project was shelved earlier this year by the Ohio Department of Transportation after costs ballooned to about $110 million, nearly 30 percent more than what the state had earmarked for the new bridge.
However, according to ODOT spokeswoman Kathleen Fuller, the project recently was put through a process known as “value engineering.” The goal, she said, was to determine whether there were any changes that could be made that would make it economically feasible to build the new bridge.
The process involved bridge engineers from ODOT and experts from around the country, Fuller said.
There were a couple of major cost-cutting alterations that came about as a result of the review, she said. One involved reducing the width of the span from 48 feet to 32 feet.
The original plans called for the new bridge to have two 12-foot-wide lanes for vehicle traffic, two 10-foot-wide shoulders and a pathway for pedestrians and bicyclists. Under the new design, it would have the two traffic lanes and 4-foot-wide shoulders, Fuller said.
Also, while the new bridge would still be cable-stayed, it would have two smaller towers, rather than the one 500-foot tower, as originally planned, she said.
Going with the two towers would “significantly reduce” the amount of concrete and steel that would be required to build the new bridge, Fuller said. Material costs were one of the reasons cited by ODOT for bids on the project coming in much higher than anticipated.
Fuller said ODOT plans to hire a consultant to redesign the bridge before the end of the year. However, the actual redesign work won’t begin before early next year, and is expected to take a year and a half to two years, she said.
The redesign work also will have to be approved by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is expected to add another six months to a year to the timeline, Fuller said.
Under ODOT’s best-case scenario, construction of the new bridge will begin in 2010 or 2011, Fuller said. The job is expected to take three construction seasons to complete, she said.
Work on the new bridge was originally to have begun by the end of this year.
The right of way chosen for the new bridge won’t change, Fuller said. The new span would still connect with Ohio at Second and Jefferson Streets in downtown Ironton and with Kentucky at the intersection of U.S. 23 and Belfont Street, at the top of the Russell viaduct.
Because it will remain in use several years longer than anticipated, ODOT also is planning to make major repairs to the existing bridge, which is 84 years old, beginning next year, Fuller said.
KENNETH HART can be reached at khart@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2654.
