Residents to see Vine Street Bridge repairs starting in October

A bridge on the travel route used by residents and school buses to reach the northeast part of Fulton will be under construction for about two months for several repairs, according to Fulton Interim City Engineer Kyle Bruemmer.

Bruemmer said MoDOT inspected the Vine Street Bridge over Smith Branch in Fulton last spring and classified the bridge as "needing to be re-dected."

According to a document from Bruemmer that listed notes from each inspection, MoDOT inspected the bridge previously on March 25, 2011, and rated the structure in its report. MoDOT noted that the bridge's superstructure was in "poor condition" and recommended timely repair and re-decking.

Bruemmer said the bridge's superstructure - essentially the bridge beams and concrete bridge deck - will be changed. The bridge's existing concrete abutments that the current beams and deck sit on still remain in good condition, he added.

"The project is basically taking the superstructure of the bridge, which is the beams and the decking, off and putting in new bridge beams and bridge deck on and adding an improved pedestrian walkway," Bruemmer explained.

According to the city's advertisement for request for proposal (RFP), the project will include installing a wider bridge deck, a sidewalk along the bridge's west edge with pedestrian railing and standard guard railing on the vehicle lane.

He said several of the bridge's seven steel support beams are "significantly rusted," specifying that the outside bridge beams are in the worst shape.

Based on the deteriorating condition of the outside beams, MoDOT recommended channeling bridge traffic to one lane going through the middle and regulating the weight limit to a posting of 10 tons.

"If we were gonna leave both lanes open at the existing width, then it was gonna be five tons, but we could keep it open at 10 tons with width limited to just a one-lane bridge," Bruemmer said.

He said before the necessary structural improvements are completed, school buses will not be able to cross the bridge since they weigh about 13 tons. However, the temporary weight restriction imposed is problematic - Vine Street and its bridge serve as an important travel route for citizens in the northeast area of Fulton and school buses transporting students from Fulton Middle School.

"The bus barn is just north of there, so they definitely utilized Vine Street quite a bit for their bus traffic," Bruemmer said. "In the meantime, they're having to reroute their buses around the bridge until the project is completed."

Bruemmer said the design-build engineering and construction will begin sometime in October and will hopefully be completed in December.

"We're hoping that by the second semester of the school year that we'll have it open for the buses," he said. "We have a contractor who's basically doing all the bridge work and the City of Fulton is doing the approach work - the roadway work - going up to the bridge, so in December and the winter months, it's hard to predict what and when we can do work with the weather."

Once bridge repairs are completed, buses will be able to cross it, since the bridge's design will support at least 20 tons.

Aside from bus routes changing, the city officials face another problem with the project - the city has not budgeted the bridge repairs and must come up with the appropriate funding.

"I know we exceeded expectations on our sales tax in 2014, so some of those funds were gonna be designated," Bruemmer said. "But coming up with the rest of the funds - our administrator and finance director, Bill and Kathy, explored where we had money leftover in our budget and are coming up with the funds to pay for the rest of it."

The leftover capital generated from the sales tax that may be applied to project expenditures is about $96,000, according to Bruemmer. The Vine Street Bridge Design-Build Project will cost the city $218,258, which includes labor and material costs.

Originally included on the city purchasing department's pricing abstract in addition to the three base bids were three alternate bid proposals.

"The city is doing the approach work, and the alternate is that approach work," Bruemmer explained. "And to save money on the project, our street department and our city forces are gonna do the approach work. In order to do these bridge improvements - in order for traffic to make it across the bridge, the approach to the bridge is gonna have to be improved to let the road mesh up with the bridge."

Bruemmer added that there's some curb and gutter and storm sewer work in the area that will need to be improved because the road surface will be wider.

"There's some work city forces will have to do instead of having a contractor do it," he said. "We did not accept the alternative bid because the project wasn't incorporated in the budget, so trying to come up with funds was hard enough I'm sure for Bill and Kathy for the 218 (thousand dollars), so the city will do the alternate work."

The Vine Street Bridge was built in 1935, and city records do not indicate any original plans or specifications for the bridge.