DEFICIENT BRIDGES IN OKLAHOMA
OKLAHOMA CITY – Five bridges in southwest Oklahoma will be replaced, and two others will be rehabilitated, in contracts totaling $7 million that were awarded by the state Transportation Commission.
The structures include a trio of state highway bridges in Stephens County constructed a year before the infamous stock market crash of 1929 that precipitated the Great Depression, a Kiowa County bridge erected in 1940 during the era of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Works Projects Administration prior to World War II, and a century-old Jackson County bridge.
I-44 BRIDGE DUE REPAIRS
Nearly $1 million will be spent to rehabilitate a pair of bridges on Interstate 44 over Fort Sill’s Howitzer Trail and railroad 1.8 miles north of US-62 in Lawton. Expansion joints will be replaced and the concrete decks, parapet walls and slope walls of the bridges will be repaired, the Media and Public Relations Division of the Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT) reported. Built Right Construction of Savanna, Okla., was awarded a $994,388 contract on the project and was allotted 100 days to complete the work. Both I-44 structures were constructed 60 years ago, in 1959, and carry a combined average of 27,500 vehicles daily, research shows.
MODEL A BRIDGES TO BE REPLACED
Three bridges on SH-53 over Mud Creek and its overflows 11 miles east of the US-81 junction near Comanche will be replaced. The main channel bridge and two overflow bridges will be replaced with one bridge spanning the main channel and one overflow structure, ODOT said. The existing bridges are just 20 feet wide and were built 91 years ago, in 1928, when the Ford Model A first appeared on the nation’s roads. The average traffic count on those bridges is 510 vehicles per day, ODOT reported. The main channel structure will be 333 feet long and 40 feet wide, to accommodate two wide lanes of traffic with a wide shoulder on each side, and the overflow bridge will be 100 feet long and 40 feet wide, project engineers said. At $4,699,292, Treas Construction was the lowest of six bidders for the Stephens County job and was awarded the contract. The Coalgate company was allotted six months to complete the work.
WPA-ERA BRIDGE TO BE REPLACED
An aged, structurally deficient bridge in rural Kiowa County will be replaced in a $623,051 contract. The bridge lies on north/ south County Road 236 and spans Longhorn Creek 2.4 miles north of the SH-19 junction near Gotebo. The 79-year-old structure is a concrete slab span bridge with a 22-foot-wide roadway that’s supported on a stone masonry substructure. The new bridge will be a 95-foot-long single-span, pre-stressed concrete girder structure with a reinforced concrete deck 30 feet wide, ODOT engineers said. The Transportation Commission awarded the replacement contract to Sewell Brothers of Oklahoma City, the lowest of three bidders for the job. The company was allotted four months to complete the work after construction starts.