June 2003 - Laserfiche WebLink

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the bridge. We were also going to maintain three of the approach rails, which are the curved sections of the bridge. One of these approach rails was also going to be repaired. While we were doing demolition we noticed that the approach rails were in very bad condition. If you look at the far right hand side of photograph number one, you can see what happened during demolition. When this portion was being removed, it began to pull out other portions of the remaining railing that were supposed to stay there. When we removed the plaques for restoration more pieces kept falling apart. These approach rails are in what we call the clear zone of the roadway. This is an area we have to make sure is protected, to ensure that if a vehicle does hit them that they do not go over the edge. Given the condition that these railing are in now, they would not protect a vehicle from crashing into them and going over the edge. As you can see from these pictures, vehicles have already hit portions of the bridge that have been knocked out that we are going to have to repair. If while rehabilitating this bridge we happened to do something that is not sufficient from a design standpoint, and a vehicle happens to crash into it and someone gets injured then the county would be liable for this. At this point the county cannot except that liability, so we need to look at doing something about these approach rails. I spoke with Karen probably about five weeks ago and brought this to her attention. We needed to get a revised C. of A. and, also needed to get a revised, (M. O. A.), which is our Memorandum of Agreement that we have to obtain through Federal Highway. In the process Karen indicated that the commission might be receptive to looking at a change to the entire rail, since we have to take off all of the historic portions of the rail; and that we look at something that more closely resembles the existing rail. So I was working with a contractor, who is going to build this rail, and with a designer to come up with something that would meet federal highway requirements, and would be close to resembling what is already there. The designer came up with a design and then we had to send it to the contractor for them to give us a quote. We got a price last week to get this replaced including the end rails. This morning I met with officials from Indiana Department of Transportation; because they are the funding source for a portion of this bridge. We had to get them on board because of the significant over run to the project to replace the rail and then to also change the window design from what was originally bid. The window design we came up with was this extended oval opening, which is similar to the existing one. So, basically what we have done to modify the design and still maintain federal highway crash standards, is we have changed this gothic style opening to a simple extended oval with the same opening size, which is six inch by one -foot -ten -inch. There was a brief discussion between commission members and Lorie Johnson where as commission members had the following points of concern: 1. Whether or not they can or can not save any of the original approaches that are presently on the bridge. 2. Where the plaques are going to be located on the bridge. 3. Whether they are going to have lights installed on the bridge, or at least have the electricity put in place so that lights can be installed at a later date.