Bridge to be down by Oct.

TOPSHAM

Before the hanging rods start coming down this summer on the bridge that has carried traffic over the Androscoggin River between Topsham and Brunswick for more than a century, a Maine Department of Transportation engineer attended the Selectmen’s meeting Thursday to lay out the demolition process for officials and residents.

Joe Stilwell, the project engineer for removal of the Black Free Bridge, said the project will be advertised May 7 and the work could begin in late June, but most likely early July. The contract will require comple- tion by Oct. 31. The estimated removal cost of the structure, installing a guardrail, loam and seed is $187,000 and the total estimated project cost is $233,160. After removal, the vehicle bridge structure will be completely gone and just the train trestle will remain.

During the removal there will be two 11-foot lanes on Route 1 in Brunswick at all times from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., for at most five days, Stilwell said. From 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. crews are allowed to reduce traffic to one 11-foot lane for up to five days. In Topsham, the contractor will have to maintain at least one 9-foot lane on Twin Pines Road, a private road, for residents to access their property.

The contractor will have the option to work from the train trestle above the bridge, which is not being removed. The state owns the bridge and has been coordinating with railroad operator Pan Am Railway, whose train occasionally crosses the trestle to go to the scrap yard in Lewiston.

The guardrail on Mill Street will run straight after the project and the bridge approach pavement on both sides will be removed and be loamed and seeded, Stilwell said. Some of the hanging rods are slated to go to Topsham and Brunswick.

Built in 1909 or 1910 according to a presentation by MDOT officials a year ago, the 318-foot bridge between Bridge Street in Topsham and Mill Street in Brunswick is suspended under a railroad bridge. The bridge was closed in 2011 after a collision damaged the rail, and the state determined upon further inspection that deterioration of the bridge as a whole made it no longer safe to carry traffic.

Transportation officials have estimated repairing or replacing the bridge would cost from $900,000 to $1.2 million.

Terry Smith of North Street voiced his concern Thursday over potential degradation of the railroad trestle. If this bridge has to come out, the railroad trestle is as old or older, he said, and, “we never saw any pictures of testing that was done on the railroad part of it” during a meeting last year.

Smith said he raises this concern because there is only one business, Grimmel Industries, using the railroad and hasn’t used it for about nine months. A railroad engine weighs about 250 tons he said, “and we’re concerned about the cars and the safety of the lower bridge.”

“The cost of what we’re putting out here, if we really think about this and step back and say, ‘Why don’t we just go ahead and take the whole thing down?’” Smith said. The contractor could recoup the cost from taking the steel out. He said he talked to the owner of property on the Topsham side of the bridge and is willing to grant the town an easement “so we could continue that trail along the river and make it like a trail rail program.”

Living near the railroad tracks himself, this also could stop the “undesirable traffic that’s coming across that railroad bridge,” Smith said.

Joel Kittredge of the MDOT bridge program said the truss has been evaluated and is monitored. MDOT inspects its bridges every two years “and any bridge we deem unsafe we would close.” A railroad bridge Pan Am operates, it is not on any work plans destined for removal, repairs or funding, he said. The state owns the railway corridor.

Selectman Donald Russell said he was surprised selectmen didn’t hear from any of the residents who have sent letters in an effort to try to preserve the bridge and hold off on demolition plans in order to seek funding. Plans for the bridge demolition “is out of our hands,” he said and before he got the call from residents that the bridge is coming out and they didn’t know anything about it, he wanted residents to have an opportunity to hear an update on the removal plans.

dmoore@timesrecord.com

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