Long-delayed repairs for the historic Vilas Bridge that connects Bellows Falls and North Walpole are slowly moving forward.
Inspectors from the New Hampshire Department of Transportation (NHDOT) closed the bridge that spans the Connecticut River in March 2009, due to deterioration mostly caused by road salt.
Last week at the Walpole Town Hall, a special joint board meeting of Rockingham, Bellows Falls, and Walpole municipal officials learned that NHDOT is about to start the preliminary engineering phase.
That phase will mark the first step in a long process that officials say is slated to finish with final rehabilitation construction in 2015.
According to NHDOT Administrator of Bridge Design Mark W. Richardson, the department hopes that advertising for bids can take place in late 2014 and construction can start in 2015.
He estimated that once work started, it will take two construction seasons to complete.
“If we are to maintain our schedule, we have to begin the preliminary engineering phase within the next few months,” Richardson explained to the boards.
He reminded the local officials that while 2015 might seem like a long way away, the whole process takes time to work through.
But at the meeting, hosted by the Walpole Selectboard, officials focused on the issues they felt were important enough to push the project up on NHDOT's “red list” of bridges that are most in need of repair or rehabilitation.
Rockingham Selectboard members Tom MacPhee and Ann DiBernardo were present, along with Municipal Manager Tim Cullenen, and state Rep. Matt Treiber, who also serves on the Selectboard.
The Bellows Falls Trustees were represented by Paul Obuchowski, Colin James, and Deborah Wright.
Maintaining the bridges
The Vilas Bridge is 93 percent owned by New Hampshire, whose official state boundary is the low-water mark on the western bank of the Connecticut River.
Because of this quirk, New Hampshire is responsible for the maintenance of all the bridges that span the river.
Vermont is responsible for only the 7 percent of the bridge that lies on the west bank of the Connecticut River, so the state will kick in 7 percent of the matching funds for its rehabilitation.
Mike Hedges, the structures program manager of the Vermont Agency of Transportation, said his team is in sync with the New Hampshire Bureau of Bridge Design's schedule, and his team is experiencing no hitches on its end.
Asked if his agency might be willing or able to take more responsibility for completing the bridge faster, he replied, “We have our hands full [doing AOT projects] on our side of the river.”
The questions from the Vermont boards centered around a perceived delay in completing the bridge project, which results in a noticeable loss of traffic through the Square of Bellows Falls, some residents complain.
Some business owners have noted that they have seen a significant drop in revenue since the bridge closed two years ago. Others also attribute the decline to the ongoing recession.
Rockingham Development Director Francis “Dutch” Walsh raised several points regarding truck traffic crossing south of the Vilas Bridge.
At the Westminster bridge on Route 123, trucks have to pass through a narrow railroad underpass. He claimed to have experienced a delay while a truck driver “got down out of his truck to measure the overhead,” uncertain his vehicle had the clearance to pass without hitting the underpass.
Wright asked about load limits on the New Arch Bridge, the other passage into Vermont from North Walpole.
Design Chief David L. Scott assured the audience that when bridges are built, “even though there might be only two lanes painted for traffic, they are designed, measuring from curb to curb, to hold three lanes of traffic, if that is how many will fit,” as in the case of the New Arch Bridge.
“All bridges are specified with legal loads to accommodate the maximum traffic a bridge would hold,” he added.
DiBernardo mentioned her main concern about the New Arch Bridge detour: “safety at the railroad crossing.”
Everyone traveling north on Route 12 or taking that detour to Vermont must navigate the crossing, which often is stopped to allow trains to slowly move by, she said.
“We shouldn't have to wait for a fatality to know that increased traffic means the risk for death or injury is more likely,” DiBernardo said.
Earlier studies by Rockingham and Bellows Falls boards noted that getting across the bridge at certain times of the day, notably at noontime, can take significantly longer with the detour.
At one point, an unofficial traffic study recorded 20-minute delays in turning left towards the Village at the Vermont end of the bridge at noon when traffic is heaviest.
Cost of repairs
The project will cost between $3 million and $6 million, Richardson said.
“As the plan becomes more refined during the process, we can be more accurate with the numbers,” he said.
He explained that because of the geology at the bridge site, he was not sure how materials will be removed and replaced.
“[Workers] have to stand somewhere, and some sort of scaffolding may have to be built,” which might affect the numbers, Richardson said.
He also mentioned construction costs can vary, as builders have seen in the last five years.
“Nothing is written in stone at this point,” he said. “We won't know until we get further along in the project.”
Several officials asked what could be done to ensure the project stays on target and does not get dropped along the way through 2015.
Tim Murphy, executive director of the Southwest New Hampshire Regional Planning Commission, said that projects completed in the past had one common aspect: the advocates who showed up at each step of the way.
“I recommend that you continue to advocate for the process by putting together a concise three minute presentation that's spiffy, and appoint a spokesperson to deliver it [at the public meetings by the state this fall],” he said.
He mentioned he had seen that method deliver a concise and meaningful message effectively. “Those are the projects that consistently saw completion.”
Walsh and MacPhee asked Richardson what collaborative steps a municipality could take to move the project faster.
Richardson mentioned repeatedly that the biggest issue was funding and staffing.
He noted that staffing levels had been cut in the bureau, not unlike all state agencies in New Hampshire, and funding for projects had tightened in the last several years.
“We're moving along as fast as the staffing and funding allow,” he said.
All three boards expressed skepticism of the process.
Walpole Selectboard member Jamie Teague brought up the “Charlestown Road [Route 12] project” as an example of a project getting through the first step of planning and engineering, “only to be dropped.”
“There's no guarantee that won't happen [with the Vilas bridge project],” she said.
However, Richardson said, “politics do not play a part.”
“We must abide by the law that formed the bureau and created the [NHDOT] red list on what projects get on the list, and which ones get completed, and by what priority,” he said, reiterating that the wild card was funding.
“Once we get into preliminary engineering,” Richardson said, “we will stay the course through the two to four years it takes to complete the project, and we are just about to get into that process. I intend to make sure that this project stays in the 10-year plan.”
MacPhee asked whether temporary decking would allow at least single-lane traffic to use the bridge. Richardson said he would pursue that suggestion.
Historic preservation?
Walsh asked about the effectiveness of obtaining historic bridge preservation grant funding as a way to get the project going sooner.
Richardson said he thought it should be explored, as “anything added to the pot” will help the process.
He told the three boards that the design plan called for retaining much of the historic look of the bridge, but noted there was some question about whether the concrete guardrails could be reproduced.
One of the board members indicated that materials and technology can replicate the guardrails within traffic safety specifications. Richardson said he was not aware of that and would be interested to have that information.
Richardson made it clear that the Bureau of Bridge Design had what he estimated was “maybe 10 to 15” projects in various stages throughout New Hampshire that are on the red list prioritized ahead of the Vilas Bridge.
He explained that priority was based on a number of factors, such as whether the detours were workable, and how a closure would affect a community's need for accessing points on either side of a bridge.
In the case of the Vilas Bridge detour, two choices are available north and south along the river only a few miles apart, allowing communities on both sides to get across the river.
Several bridges still lie ahead of the Vilas Bridge on the red list, and moving the bridge up on the list “might” be influenced either by finding extra funding sources, Richardson said.
Or, as he suggested, by “making friends with a Congressman.”