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July 19, 2011

Highway work near Kugler Creek nears completion (WITH VIDEO)

By Benjamin Bullard The Cullman Times

Motorists who’ve navigated the twisty construction zone descending to the Kugler Creek bridge on U.S. Highway 278 for the past two years won’t have to wait much longer for the new span of the re-routed highway to open, if work on the project proceeds as planned.

According to state highway officials, the project — located four miles west of Interstate 65 — is on track for a late summer completion date, if weather and contractors’ schedules align.

“I would say in the next few weeks it should be done,” said division 1 engineer Johnny Harris of the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) Monday. “There is some paving and some tie-in work that needs to be done, and then, of course, the final striping of the road. We’ll probably be having to do some of the tie-in work while under traffic, and we’re proceeding with that work in the next few weeks. Our paving contractors are saying, they think, they’ll be done by mid-August.”

Tie-in work refers to connecting the new and old sections of the existing roadway, which Harris said must be coordinated in a fashion that allows construction workers to do their jobs while re-routing traffic at the connection points.

Work on the new bridge, which eliminates the highway’s elevation changes and tight curves leading to the old, narrow bridge, is done. The old span, along with the portion of the existing highway that will be closed after the new section is opened, will continue to be accessible to local traffic. The old highway will become a county road and will be maintained by the Cullman County Commission.

Harris said the old bridge, while too narrow for highway traffic, was not deficient for local use. Stop signs will be installed at the intersections where the old road meets the new.

“The old bridge should be structurally okay, it’s just that functionally, it’s a little bit narrow. But it should serve the local traffic very well,” Harris said. “The old roadway will fit into the new roadway, but the new roadway will kind of make a new smooth transition. You’ll make a left t or right turn off the old roadway, with a stop condition for people needing to get onto the main road.”

The new bridge spans a steep gap between hills that required construction of a massive retaining wall on the section of the hill that holds the bridge’s western foundation.

“It’s a pretty substantial bridge relocation project that required us eliminating the vertical curve,” said Harris. “It’s a safety issue there, and that’s what precipitated the need for the height of the new structure. We’ve got a 3:1 slope form the shoulder down to the top of the retaining wall, and then the wall keeps the embankment from encroaching down the hill.”

Although activity at the site had temporarily slowed in recent weeks, Harris said that’s just the nature of lining up phases of work on a major engineering project and that the bridge work is coming in on schedule and near its targeted budget.

“I don’t know that we had any over-runs on cost; it was bid at $11.873 million and I think the final will be around $12 million when it’s done,” he said. “Our prime contractor, the Morris Group, went bankrupt, but the bonding company of course was able to keep all the subcontractors; I don’t think there was any lull in regard to that. I think, once the bridge contractor got finished with the bridge, there had to be some gap in actual work while the contractor for the next phase mobilized.”

* Benjamin Bullard can be reached by e-mail at bbullard@cullmantimes.com or by telephone at 734-2131 ext. 270.

 

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