Ok I dont really get on a soap box and rant, but this is a MUST read, especially for those of us that use the Willard bridge. Concerns were raised back in 2007 to where the bridge had to be monitored and regularly inspected to check for pin failure. We need to contact our county commissioners and let them know this has been delayed far too long and it needs to be replaced ASAP!! By Tim Hrenchir tim.hrenchir@cjonline Regular-sized school buses will no longer be allowed to to cross the aging Willard Bridge as a result of vehicle weight limit reductions Shawnee County will put into effect Thursday, county public works director Tom Vlach said Monday. Vlach spoke to County Commissioners Kevin Cook, Shelly Buhler and Bob Archer at their morning meeting about the condition of the bridge, located along the county’s western edge on N.W. Carlson Road, about 2.7 miles north of Interstate 70. Vlach said that after the Kansas Department of Transportation arranged for recent inspections of fracture-critical bridges, including the Willard Bridge, a consultant for KDOT recommended that bridge’s weight limits be reduced to nine tons for two-axle vehicles, 15 tons for three-axle vehicles and 27 tons for vehicle combinations involving more than three axles. Vlach indicated in a news release that the county will implement the proposed new limits for the bridge, where current limits are 14 tons for two-axle vehicles, 21 tons for three-axle vehicles and 36 tons for vehicle combinations involving more than three axles. Vlach said the decision on whether to lower the limits ultimately lies with the county engineer, who is Vlach. He said emergency vehicles are exempt from the revised weight limits. Vlach told commissioners that state officials and consultants for the state and county would attend their meeting Thursday, where the discussion would involve “people more well-versed in bridge structures than I am, so we can have a better discussion.” The Willard Bridge -- built in 1955, then reconstructed and widened in 1983 -- is located in the commission district represented by Buhler, who on Monday stressed the importance of replacing it. Buhler said 3,500 vehicles cross the bridge daily. “We’re running out of time to replace this bridge if we don’t want to impact traffic,” she said. Buhler said she’d learned from the superintendent for Kaw Valley Unified School District 321, which has buses that cross the bridge, that the district would “have to do some adjustments” if its weight limits were lowered, Buhler recommended the county go “at all different angles” to secure funding to replace the bridge, including potentially using any money left over when a countywide, half-cent sales tax expires at the end of 2016 and/or money from an extension of that tax, which will take effect beginning in 2017. Buhler said: “I think it’s time to turn up the heat a little bit on this. Not a little bit -- a lot.” Vlach said that when the county does replace the bridge, it plans to keep the current bridge in operation while the replacement is being built. Vlach in 2007 considered reducing the bridge’s weight limits, and ultimately lowered the limit that year only for vehicle combinations involving more than three axles, to 36 tons from 40. The Willard Bridge is the same type as the Interstate 35 bridge in Minneapolis that collapsed in August 2007, killing 13 people and injuring 145. Public concern over the Willard Bridge’s condition increased in 2009 when the county commission approved a list of priority transportation needs that said that if one of the bridge’s eight steel pins fails, it would collapse without warning. Vlach stressed at the time that the state continued to regularly inspect the bridge to ensure it remained safe. Cook described each of the bridge’s pins Monday as being “like a paper clip that you bend back and forth -- if you bend it too many times, eventually it will snap.” Vlach’s news release said advance notification signs regarding the new limits would be placed at N.W. Interstate 70 and Carlson Road, N.W. 39th and Carlson Road, N.W. US-24 highway and Rossville Road and N.W. 62nd and Rossville Road.
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 01:13:50 +0000
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