The Lake Today

Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) engineer Bob Lynch said he received word this week that three bridges projects in Miller County are scheduled for completion during the upcoming construction season.

Work on the projects, including the aging bridges over Saline Creek, Dog Creek and Humphrey Creek, will begin in early April and run through the construction season.

In deciding how to handle two of the projects, MoDOT officials have decided to close a portion of Highway 17 near Tuscumbia for a period of time and handle both bridge replacements at the same time. However, because one project will take several weeks longer than the other the section of Highway 17 over Dog Creek should re-open long before the second project is finished.

The two bridges span two separate waterways within a few miles of each other, just outside Tuscumbia, the county seat of Miller County. Because both projects are scheduled for this year and both are at different locations along Highway 17, but within a few miles of each other, last summer MoDOT engineers asked Miller County Presiding Commissioner Tom Wright to “get a feel” about how county residents felt about doing both projects at the same time.

A few weeks later Wright told The Lake Today that he had received little response from the county residents one way or the other.

However, last week, when information was given to Lynch about MoDOT’s upcoming road construction schedule, it became clear that the replacement projects for the two bridges would at least overlap by a few weeks.

Work on the Dog Creek Bridge is schedule to begin in mid May and take until the first of July to complete. And work on the Saline Creek Bridge is set to begin in early June and be completed in mid August.

The Dog Creek Bridge, located about 5 miles south of the southern junction of Highway 17 and 52 (in the direction of Iberia), is being funded through MoDOT’s $600 million Safe and Sound Bridge Program.

The 86-year-old Saline Creek Bridge, located on Highway 17 about three miles northeast of the same junction with Highway 52 is being handled as part of MoDOT’s 2011 – 2015 STIP (Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan).

The Saline Creek Bridge, which handles more than 1,000 vehicles per day including heavy trucks and farm equipment, carries two lanes of traffic, but is only 20-feet wide. The understructure of the metal bridge is badly eroded and sports a heavy coating of rust.

The 288-foot long span is of the “riveted six-panel truss design,” with a metal arched “roof” support system with a clearance ratio too low for a number of today’s taller vehicles.

The new design will add eight feet to the width of the roadway and will have side railings instead of the current overhead steel structure.

The Dog Creek Bridge is made entirely of concrete and is the oldest bridge of its type in Miller County. Built in 1926 the bridge is of the “T-beam fixed structure type” with a length of 170- feet and with two 10-feet wide traffic lanes.

Both bridges are currently rated as “structurally deficient” by both bridgehunter.com and historicbridges.com.

While the two bridges are closed, southbound traffic that normally uses Highway 17 and the Saline Creek Bridge to reach Tuscumbia will be routed back to Highway 54 then southward to the junction of Highway 52 near Eldon before turning southwest to reach the city.

In the meantime traffic that uses Highway 17 to travel between Tuscumbia and Iberia will be forced to utilize a detour that will take them onto state Routes A and PP and Highway 52 to reach either of the two cities.

Lynch said when the projects begin, detours for all traffic utilizing the affected routes will be clearly marked.

However, before work begins on either the Saline Creek or Dog Creek bridge projects, a third Miller County Bridge is scheduled for replacement.

The Highway 52 bridge over Humphrey Creek, near St. Elizabeth, is scheduled to be replaced beginning in early April and ending in mid May.

A steel stringer type structure, the Humphrey Creek Bridge was built in 1932 and rehabilitated in 1994. Its replacement is also being funded through the Safe and Sound Bridge Program.