Work begins on Guilford Memorial Bridge
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Observer file photo/Mike Lange |
By Mike Lange
Staff Writer
GUILFORD — Replacement of the Guilford Memorial Bridge deck will get underway on Monday, July 6 as the span will be cut down to one travel lane and traffic will be controlled by temporary signal lights.
The $1.5-million project is slated for completion by Nov. 20, according to Town Manager Tom Goulette. “If not, the contractor (Reed and Reed, Inc.) is subject to a fine of $500 a day,” Goulette said. “They’ll come back next year and put a final surface on the deck since you can’t do it in the wintertime. But they said it should be ready to go by Memorial Day (2016).”
When the reconstruction was first announced last year, town officials were concerned that the entire bridge would be closed to traffic in the middle of the summer tourist season.
In addition, that scenario would have been “really difficult for the community,” Goulette said. “It would affect all the businesses on the Dover Road like Lovell’s Hardware, the IGA and Guilford Motors; plus the library, town offices, the Red Maple Inn and traffic from Hardwood Products,” Goulette said.
Approximately 6,800 vehicles pass over the bridge daily and 12 percent are trucks.
Fortunately, DOT Project Engineer Steve Bodge said at a public hearing last summer that since it’s a steel-girder bridge, “We can do one half at a time. On other bridges, we don’t have that option.”
The Guilford Memorial Bridge was built in 1954, and the deck was “patched up several times. But this will be the first complete deck replacement. It should last another 25 years, easily,” Bodge said.
Central Maine Power and Moosehead Enterprises are in the process of relocating their overhead wires in anticipation of the start of the project.
During the construction, Oak Street will be changed to one-way traffic, according to the town manager. “You may enter at either end, but there will be no exit into the square,” he said. “Traffic will have to exit onto Hudson Avenue only.”
Another local project on the DOT work plan is rehabilitation of about a half-mile of Route 150 beginning just south of the Guilford-Parkman town line, also slated for completion in the 2015 fiscal year.
But Goulette said that the bridge has been a high priority for his town and the DOT for a number of years. “Our goal was to see it done by 2016 when we celebrate the town’s bicentennial,” he said. “And it’s going to happen.”
Updates on the bridge reconstruction and other municipal activities are posted on the Town of Guilford, Maine Facebook page.