Construction on the State Route 14 Lake Rockwell Bridge is still underway following a contractor’s discovery of corroded and buckled bridge beams in early October of last year.
State Route 14 warning sign
Initially in April of 2016, the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) conducted its annual inspection of the bridge, contrary to the federal guidelines of one inspection for every two years. They found no reason to think this bridge was in trouble after it received an above average rating.
According to Brent Kovacs, Public Information Officer from ODOT, they have dedicated bridge inspectors who rate the bridges from 1 to 9. Nine being the highest rating, meaning a new bridge.
“Receiving a 7 out of 9, means the substructure and superstructure is in good condition,” Kovacs said. “[we] really had no reason to think anything would be wrong with this bridge for years to come.”
The contractor discovered the buckling bridge beams while working on the road during another project. They are now in the process of replacing the bridge under an emergency contract.
Replaced H-Pile
“The piling collapsed due to corrosion,” Craig Dunbar, Project Engineer from ODOT (SR 14 project), said. “All of them collapsed about eight inches, accordion style. We decided to close the bridge and remove the bridge deck and piers and replace them.”
According to a document called Safe and Sound Bridge Terminology produced by the Missouri Department of Transportation, an H-pile is a long column driven deep into the ground for support. On the SR 14 bridge these piles were made of steel.
Dunbar said the crew have been working on the bridge since mid-October. He thinks the water level might have covered up the corroded steel when they inspected it. He calls this pretty typical when it comes to bridge replacement.
The cause of this bridge’s damage is still being researched and without video evidence or witnesses there is no way to tell how this happened, according to Kovacs
Portage county is in District 4 of ODOT’s system. Kovacs said this has never happened before in this district and this bridge type is not very popular within the district.
Brent Kovacs
“We don’t have a lot of these types of bridges but we did go out and take look at them and no concerns with those,” Kovacs said. “so no planed additional work to similar bridge types.”
District 4 has over 1,400 bridges. These bridges are inspected every year and everything goes into account except the concrete driving surface. The bridges are designed with a higher load rating than the county or township because the state routes need to handle heavy truck traffic and more weight.
“If you’re a truck driver and you want to bring a heavy load through, you need to go through our Columbus Permitting Office,” Kovacs said. “We checked those records and there hasn’t been any heavy loads.”
Without submitting a permit there is no way to tell who or what drove over the bridge. If a company damages the bridge their insurance needs to pay for it but if they permit it, they believe the load can safely go over the bridge.
Jim Bowling
“In Kent we have 10 bridges that we maintain that are vehicular bridges and three pedestrian bridges,” Jim Bowling, City of Kent Engineer said. “We track those every year and there isalways some amount of repair that gets done on bridges.”
The city of Kent’s most recent project was replacing the Allen Drive bridge which goes over Fish Creek. The bridge was aging and was near the end of its useful life, according to Bowling.
“It’s not that the problem was discovered recently, we track bridges every year,” Bowling said about the Allen Drive bridge. “We can watch and repair bridges as time goes along.”
Before they can start work on any bridge there needs to be a financial plan in place. They need to find the money for the project. According to Bowling, for the most part about 80 percent of the funding needed for repairs comes from gas tax dollars and the rest from local funds or local tax payers.
The owner of the bridge is responsible for the inspections. Currently there is a program set up with ODOT where they rate the city of Kent’s bridges and send the city reports, according to Bowling.
H-pile repairs, beneath bridge.
“There’s redundancies built in every bridge so there isn’t any kind of significant failure,” Bowling said.
According to Bowling the next project the city has their sights on is the Sunrise Drive bridge over Fish Creek.
“Right now all of our bridges except Sunrise (Drive) are (rated) above five,” Bowling said. “They are all in fairly good condition, we have been replacing bridges for the last 10 years.”
Kovacs says ODOT hopes on having the SR 14 bridge in Streetsboro open in late March.
If you are driving and see something wrong or out of place give the police a call or the Ohio State Highway Patrol.
