News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Overton County opening bids Thursday to replace a bridge connecting the Monroe and Alpine communities.
Highway Superintendent Tim Kennedy said the bridge on Dogwalk Road washed out in a rainstorm last August and had to be completely shut down. Kennedy said citizens currently have to drive an extra ten miles to go through the area without the bridge.
“It’s not just for the traveling public, but for the emergency services,” Kennedy said. “If we have to put an ambulance through there or law enforcement or something, they have to go around, a lot of times it puts them out of the way. It’s just a hardship on everybody.”
Kennedy said it has taken this long to get to the bidding process because of the different processes required by local, state, and federal governments. Kennedy said the county has heard from seven legitimate bidders so he is hopeful about finding an affordable option on Thursday.
“It takes about sixty days to get started from the time you award it to a contractor and then get them onsite,” Kennedy said. “Probably the best we’re going to be looking at is sixty days and this bridge is probably going to take close to a hundred and eighty days to build it from the time we start ’til the time we turn traffic back on.”
Kennedy said it will likely take eight to nine months without major complications to complete from when bids are open Thursday because weather is also a factor. Kennedy said an engineer gave a cost estimate that the bridge would take around $750,000 to build.
“The existing bridge is going to be demolished, it’s going to be tore down and removed,” Kennedy said. “Then we’re going to build a new bridge back in place.”
Kennedy said drivers also used the bridge to cross from the highway to Byrdstown to the highway to Jamestown. Kennedy said these drivers now have to come all the way to Livingston to get where they need to go.
“The people in that area, they have really been patient with us and I hope they continue to be,” Kennedy said. “It makes life easier for us when you have patient, and they are, they know it’s nothing that we done. It’s an act of nature that destroyed it and it’s just taking us a while to get it to where we can get it rebuilt.”
