More vehicles are crossing a U.S. 50 bridge over Blue Mesa Reservoir and fewer closures are anticipated after Labor Day — a move that transportation officials hope will provide relief to traffic flows across a critical route that connects Montrose, Gunnison and Hinsdale counties.
Single-lane traffic in alternating directions is now allowed over Middle Bridge west of Gunnison for six hours a day, up from four, and after Labor Day, the bridge will open from 6:30 a.m. to 7 p.m., Colorado Department of Transportation officials said during a meeting Tuesday evening.
School buses are also allowed to cross the bridge, which abruptly shut down April 18 after inspectors discovered a 3-inch-long crack along a steel beam. The first day of school for students at Gunnison Watershed School District is Aug. 26.
“I still remember the kids trying to take the boat to school earlier this year,” Herman Stockinger, CDOT’s deputy director, said Tuesday. “It took creativity for the community to come together to make that happen and it made for a great story, but that’s just not sustainable for our school kids.”
If repairs continue as scheduled, officials hope to open the bridge to all legal loads by mid-October.
“We think this updated plan does the best job of balancing immediate community needs with our shared goal of completing the structural repairs this year,” Stockinger said.
The expanded schedule comes as crews continue to repair the bridge that connects the towns of Gunnison and Montrose.
The repairs require 410 tons of steel, which include 1,400 individual steel plates and 55,000 individual bolts, said Jason Proskovec, a project director with Kiewit Construction, which CDOT brought in to handle and carry out the bridge repair work.
Proskovec said the 410 tons of steel were procured from a mill in North Carolina, then was sent to six shops in Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, Texas and Colorado to be cut into shapes and drilled with holes, before it was sent to Gunnison.
The majority of the bolts came from a manufacturing company in Portland, Oregon, before they were tested in Ohio, Proskovec said.
“So a pretty huge national, logistical effort to pull this off,” he said.
Repairs are also underway on the Lake Fork Bridge, which is west of Middle Bridge. Lake Fork was built with the same high-strength steel that was welded on in the early 1960s using a technique that turned out to be faulty.
Attention was drawn to both bridges after federal highway officials ordered mandatory inspections. CDOT identified five potentially problematic bridges across the state that used the problematic T-1 steel. Further inspection revealed that there were three that fit the federal criteria for further action — two bridges over Blue Mesa and one in Bent County (that bridge was deemed safe last year).
After Labor Day, alternating traffic will be allowed across the Lake Fork Bridge between 6 a.m. and 11:30 p.m. At night, there will be more closures as crews conduct repairs, but traffic will still be allowed across, officials said.
Vehicles of all legal weights are currently allowed across the Lake Fork Bridge.
During Tuesday’s meeting, one resident asked if CDOT could add porta-potties by the road, citing they have seen people go to the bathroom on the road as they wait in the line of traffic before crossing the Middle Bridge. Officials said they are addressing the issue.
“I want to acknowledge again that this has been more than an inconvenience, it has been a major impact on people’s lives,” Gunnison County Commissioner Laura Puckett Daniels said.
“We love that we are at the end of the road, we love that we are hard to access so that this place is special for us, but it has been an especially trying time,” Puckett Daniels said. “Gunnison County is open if you want to come visit, if you want to fish on Blue Mesa, it’s a really good time to be here, but you do have to jump through a few hurdles to make that happen.”
County Road 26 remains open as a detour outside of the scheduled openings across the U.S. 50 bridge and for heavier vehicles, including campers, trucks pulling trailers and semitrucks.
For now, officials are not adjusting the times a piloted car will guide vehicles along the detour route, but are considering opening more times late at night, said Martin Schmidt, assistant county manager for public works for Gunnison County.
“Continually increasing access is what’s occurred throughout this project,” he said, “and we continue to push for that.”