DURHAM

Residents from Durham and Lisbon found out during a meeting Tuesday that the Maine Department of Transportation plans to replace the 1930s-era bridge spanning the Androscoggin River between the two towns.

Officials gave no answer for exactly when that will happen, and no guarantee the bridge replacement will even get funded in the next biennium project cycle.

Benjamin Condon, a design and build assistant project manager for the MDOT bridge program, told the audience sitting on metal folding chairs in a bay at the Durham fire station that the project is not funded for construction and is in the preliminary engineering stage. The MDOT held the meeting Tuesday to get input from the public. He emphasized the bridge is safe and MDOT wants to replace the bridge before it is unsafe.

“We just know that the bridge that is currently in place is reaching the end of its useful life, and we need to start pursuing efforts” of determining what the department will do to replace the bridge, Condon said.

Tim Merritt of Stantec Consulting, senior project manager for the consulting firm hired to help MDOT on the project, said Tuesday, “Initially this was scoped as what we call a bridge improvement, which means that we take a look at it and the condition of the bridge and decide whether to rehabilitate it or replace it all together. That led to us doing a detailed bridge inspection in March. … The bridge was built in the late ’30s after the 1936 record flood washed out the previous bridge. So the bridge is old, it is near the end of its service life. Obviously trucks on the road in 1936 were much smaller than they are today.”

He said the steel truss has some deteriorating members and the concrete deck vehicles ride on causes some concern. The Lisbon pier he said was “by far the worst foundation system.”

Looking at these factors and what it would take to rehabilitate the bridge with associated rough costs, “The decision’s been made to not try to rehabilitate the bridge. It will be a replacement moving forward.”

The bridge is narrow and has poor site distance, there are some issues with the intersection on the Durham side of the bridge, and there are truck-turning concerns, Merritt said as he pointed to ends of the bridge rail on the map that have been clipped many times over the years. “We actually witnessed it twice during the five days we were doing the inspection in March. It’s not an event you want to occur while you’re standing on the bridge.”

The bridge is only 22 feet wide from rail to rail, Merritt said, which is very sub-standard by today’s standards. A secondary goal of the bridge replacement is to correct some of these safety issues.

To do that, MDOT is looking to build a 32-foot-wide bridge, with two 11-foot lanes and two 5-foot shoulders at a minimum. Merritt said the new bridge will not be a trusstype structure but will be a concrete deck with bridge railings, so there will be no large structure above the roadway impeding site distance. The bridge will be designed for today’s trucks on the road. The shoulders would be used in place of any sidewalk, as the existing sidewalk along the old bridge dumps pedestrians on the Durham side in an already unsafe intersection.

The new bridge will be built “off-line” so MDOT can maintain two-lane traffic on the existing bridge while the new bridge is built. When the new bridge is open, the existing bridge will be demolished and completely removed, including the foundations.

The new bridge will likely be more skewed to the river than the current bridge to get smoother curves at both ends of the bridge, Merritt said, but the exact location has not been determined.

Merritt said Miller Hydro has concern that the new bridge location may affect its operations at the dam, and “we’re working with them to ensure that doesn’t happen.”

Pointing to the former Knight-Celotex Fiberboard plant along Route 196 on a large aerial map, Merritt said MDOT is aware it is now owned by a large recycling company and being demolished and all the buildings removed.

“We’re aware of that and we’re accounting for that in our design,” he said.

Tuesday was the first of two meetings Condon planned to hold in this preliminary stage. After developing a preliminary design report with the recommendation for the bridge replacement, location and the associated safety and other issues, he will come back to hold a formal meeting and present MDOT’s plan.

Tom Bowie, who has had to run a big rig over the bridge several times, said if the state is going to build a bridge where the nearest bridges are as far as 15 miles away, it should plan for future growth and traffic and build it four lanes wide.

“If you’re going to do it, spend the money now and do it right the first time,” Bowie said.

Condon said the MDOT is working within a very limited budget and has needs all over the state that it would love to spend money on. The MDOT is looking at traffic projections 20 to 30 years out and will try to design a bridge taking those projections into account.

Rep. Dale Crafts, R-Lisbon, opined it makes sense to him to bring the bridge from Route 125 across the river through the site of the former press board mill (formerly the Knight-Celotex Fiberboard plant) that is being torn down on the Lisbon side, to dump out on Route 196. This would make a huge difference in the traffic, he said, adding that traffic on Main and Canal streets bottleneck. The majority of audience members raised their hands when Condon asked who agreed with him.

Other residents also expressed concerns about the intersection on the Lisbon side of the bridge, which is not slated to be part of this project, and the stability of Route 125 along the river in Durham. They warned there are fishing parks on both sides of the bridge MDOT must retain access to. Others questioned constructing a bridge with no sidewalk — suggesting moving the new bridge further down the river would cut down on the number of people walking across it. A 5-foot sidewalk along the bridge would cost upwards of $350,000, Condon estimated with quick math.

The MDOT expects to come back to a public meeting with a plan for the bridge replacement in eight months to a year, but Condon couldn’t say with certainty the project will be funded in the next work program. In the January or February timeframe, decisions will be made about what projects will be funded so at the next public meeting the department should have a better idea if the replacement will be in the next two or four years.

The project manager, Benjamin Condon, can be reached at 592-0921 or [email protected].