DRESDEN — U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, crossing the Richmond-Dresden bridge on Friday to discuss the potential for federal funding to help replace the 80-year-old rusty, dented structure, got an up-close and personal view of a big reason it’s targeted for replacement.
A large truck rumbled across the narrow bridge, driving smack down its center, because the sides of the bridge are too low to allow tall trucks to pass without striking the supporting angled steel beams.
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“We’re coming across and this truck was coming toward us straight down the middle of the bridge. I thought, ‘Where are we going to go?’ ” Collins said shortly after stepping out of the sport utility vehicle that drove her to the Dresden side of the bridge. “That really was an eye-opener, I have to tell you.”
Collins, the senior Republican on the Senate Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee, said she is hopeful the bridge will receive $10.8 million in federal funding to help start construction of its replacement next year.
The deteriorated swing bridge, which has no sidewalks, takes traffic across the Kennebec River between Richmond and Dresden.
With state funding already committed and Collins pushing for a $10.8 million federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery grant, work could start in 2013 and the replacement bridge could be ready for traffic in 2015, according to state transportation Commissioner Dave Bernhardt.
The entire project is estimated to cost about $25 million and likely to be built slightly upstream of the existing bridge.
“It is an important structure, and a large structure, which would be very difficult to fund totally, ourselves, as a state,” Bernhardt said.
State transportation officials looked into repairing the bridge or replacing it with a new low-level swing-span bridge, but rejected both options as too expensive.
Officials now plan to replace it with a span high enough to allow boats to pass beneath. Exactly how high will be determined in consultation with the Coast Guard to make sure it is high enough to allow vessels used to break up ice in the river each spring to pass underneath, Bernhardt said.
The swing span bridge — a section of which rotates horizontally until it is parallel to the main river channel to allow boats to pass through — is one of only a handful still in use in Maine. State transportation officials said the bridge opens between 50 and 60 times a year.
According to a sign attached to a dented steel beam at the bridge’s entrance on the Richmond side, it has a clearance of 11 feet on the sides and 15 feet, 3 inches in the middle.
About 3,200 vehicles use the bridge each day, according to state data.
The bridge, also called the Maine Kennebec Bridge, was built in 1931. All such spans were built between 1901 and 1954.
Its days appear numbered. The narrow bridge’s concrete piers appear to be crumbling and its green steel sections are rusted in many areas and dented in others.
A state bridge inspection report describes the 1,239-foot span’s structural condition as poor; its superstructure, deck and approach conditions as fair; and channel condition as good.
Bernhardt assures motorists that the bridge is still safe to use.
Collins said she hopes to learn whether the project will receive the federal funding by the end of the year. She said its chances of receiving the money are better because the state has also committed funding for the bridge replacement.
“That’s what we, at the federal level, like to see — that commitment from the state, so it’s a partnership,” Collins said.
She said the bridge is an example of the kind of infrastructure work that has fallen behind across the country, noting it will take decades to get to the backlog of needed infrastructure work.
Keith Edwards — 621-5647
kedwards@centralmaine.com
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