The bridges of Catoosa County are safe “within their rated capacity,” according to Public Works Director J. Olney Meadows.

According to a list provided by the county manager’s office, of 42 bridges inspected in the past two years that the county is responsible for, 13 are considered in critical need of upgrade and possibly replacement to the tune of nearly three-quarters of a million dollars.

County Manager Ron Brown said a contingent of county and state officials met with GDOT Commissioner Harold Linnenkohl on Aug. 15 to request state aid for meeting the bridge upgrade needs.

“The meeting went well, and I’m confident that the state will assist us in this,” Brown said, hopeful that the state funding will be 100 percent. He said he expects to hear back from Linnenkohl within the next week or two.

Meadows said the Georgia Department of Transportation has the expertise to inspect the county’s bridges, and makes recommendations on needed upgrades.

GDOT uses special trucks which have a hydraulic arm that can take inspectors underneath a bridge from the top when access from below is limited or impossible, Meadows said.

He said one option, currently not affecting any Catoosa bridges, is for GDOT to downgrade the rated capacity that a bridge can hold.

This action could potentially affect the routes of school buses, which require a 10-ton capacity for any crossing, although Meadows said GDOT provides excellent technical support for the county to improve or maintain its bridges’ capacities.

“And if that can be done then a bridge will not have tobe downgraded or replaced,” he said.

---

Catoosa bridges deemed in need of upgrade (and estimated cost):

* Houston Valley Road over Dry Creek ($60,000)

* Three Notch Road over Peavine Creek ($122,000)

* Keith Road over Little Tiger Creek ($65,000)

* Cooper Road over Little Tiger Creek ($20,000)

* Lakeview Drive over Black Branch ($95,000)

* Reeds Bridge Road over Chickamauga Creek ($60,000)

* Peavine Road over Peavine Creek ($75,000)

* Bandy Road over East Chickamauga Creek ($34,000)

* Yates Spring Road over Little Chickamauga Creek ($50,000)

* Cottonwood Mill Road over East Chickamauga Creek ($35,000)

* Mount Vernon Mill Road over Sugar Creek ($45,000)

* Potts Road over Peavine Creek ($26,000)

* Keith-Salem Road over Sugar Creek ($34,000)

Total: $721,000

---

Meadows said the only current bridge replacement project is over a small stream on Colbert Hollow Road in southern Catoosa County, near Woodstation Elementary, where crews recently began survey work.

‘More will than wallet’

GDOT takes on the inspection of all of Georgia’s 14,457 bridges, overpasses and culvert crossings (which technically are bridges) on a required two-year cycle.

The crossings are split approximately 50/50 between federal interstate or state highways and local streets and roads, according to Mohammed Arafa, a GDOT spokesman for the Northwest Georgia region office in Cartersville.

With regards to funding, things are tough all over, especially in light of GDOT’s projected shortfall for highway construction over the next decade.

“We have more will than wallet to fix them,” said Arafa of the state’s bridges, noting that GDOT has a $100 million budget for bridge maintenance, which is nearly 30 percent of the funds appropriated to the State Highway System Maintenance Program.

But while many of the bridges may be classified as structurally deficient or obsolete, Arafa maintains that none are unsafe. If or when an inspection deems one as such, he said GDOT immediately closes it, as was the case for a Carroll County bridge a few months back.

“The locals were very unhappy, and surely there is nothing more inconvenient to traffic flow than the closing of a bridge, but safety trumps convenience by far,” Arafa said.

Government transportation agencies across the country are increasing their focus on bridge infrastructure in the aftermath of the tragic Mississippi River bridge collapse in Minnesota earlier this month.

And funding for construction and improvements is inexorably tied to the federal government.

Arafa said that like most states, Georgia receives about 80 percent of its highway construction dollars from federal funds, “And for bridges it’s nearly 100 percent federal.”

A huge task

David Spear, a GDOT spokesman for the bridge inspection division in Atlanta, acknowledged that the task of bridge inspections is a huge undertaking.

He said GDOT has only 13 full-time bridge inspectors on staff, and so employs the services of independent contractors to assist with its inspection schedule.

Spear said other than fulfilling a request of the Federal Highway Administration to re-inspect two Georgia bridges that are similar in design to the Minnesota bridge, GDOT is not stepping up its inspection schedule.

“If we were to go out and start advancing our inspection cycle it would throw everything off-kilter,” he said, “and bridges that were due for inspection might not get done as timely.”

Spear said it’s tough to estimate the life span of a bridge, but pointed out that the South has the advantage of gentler climate conditions. “We don’t have the severe temperature fluctuations that cause bridges to expand and contract like in Minnesota.”

He said unless the FHA discovered some aspect of the Minnesota bridge that would affect Georgia bridges, GDOT will stick to its normal inspection schedule, “In which we are very comfortable and confident. We don’t want to overreact and divert resources from where they need to be.”

---

According to the Georgia Department of Transportation:

* The average age of all Georgia’s 14,000+ bridge structures is about 37 years

* More than 2,400 are 50 years old or more.

* State law requires GDOT to inspect all of bridge struc-tures every two years. Bridges that are considered “fracture critical” are in-spected annually.

* The average replacement cost for a bridge is $2-3 million.

* No Georgia bridge has ever collapsed on its own like the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis. Part of a bridge near the Georgia coast collapsed in 1972 when a ship collided with it.

* In 2004, 5 percent of Georgia’s highway system did not meet acceptable standards of inspection.

---

CLICK ON THESE LINKS

---

FEEDBACK: Send a
letter to the editor

SUBSCRIBE: Get The Catoosa County News each Wednesday

GO
BACK: Return to our homepage

---

[ad1]