By DEREK HARPER, Staff Writer
Venice Park resident Alma Johnson has tried to take in stride the
surprise closing of an Atlantic City neighborhood bridge she uses every
day.
The Ohio Avenue span over the Penrose Canal was closed June 6 due
to safety concerns, raising questions about the safety of other bridges
in the region.
“I never knew the bridge wasn’t in good repair,” Johnson said.
Johnson, 70, is president of the Venice Park
Civic Association and said she usually travels across the bridge at
least three times per day. She said it is inconvenient to detour on to
the White Horse Pike every time she leaves her neighborhood.
“Over there it’s a little messy because all of that Borgata traffic is coming in, and they’re driving crazy,” she said.
The bridge will likely remain closed for repairs
for several months, staff in the city engineer’s office said Wednesday,
forcing about 1,300 drivers every day to find an alternate route.
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal
Highway Administration listed the 1969 span as one of New Jersey’s
nearly 700 “structurally deficient” bridges. That means slightly more
than 10 percent of the state’s total bridges may have one or more
significant problems in need of repair.
In addition, a quarter of the state’s 6,486
bridges are considered “functionally obsolete,” meaning the design and
layout is not up to current standards. Nationally, about 11 percent of
the country’s 607,000 bridges are considered structurally deficient,
while 14 percent are considered functionally obsolete.
The American Society of Civil Engineers gave New
Jersey’s bridges a D grade in the report last year, saying structures
needed a cumulative $7.7 billion over the next 10 years to slow the
number of bridges deemed structurally deficient.
Richard F. Keevey, the report’s author, wrote
that he expected constraints on federal spending, requiring New Jersey
and other states to lean on local governments to pay the bill.
The National Bridge Inventory notes the bridges’
attributes and evaluates the condition of a critical part of the
nation’s infrastructure. The sufficiency of every bridge is ranked on a
100-point scale.
While bridges across New Jersey are 53 years old
on average, they have a median sufficiency rating of 83, with some
notable exceptions.
The database gave ratings of just 8 and 10 to the
two bridges that made up the Beeselys Point Bridge crossing over Great
Egg Harbor. Major structural problems closed the former private toll
road in 2004, and it is scheduled to be demolished by the end of the
year.
There are eight other bridges rated less than 20
in the region. The lowest rated is Upper Township’s Corsons Inlet
Bridge, which has a structural sufficiency rating of 11. Evaluators
rated both the superstructure and substructure as poor, while the deck
was considered fair.
On an average day, 2,495 people use the 1948
bridge. Evaluators have raised concerns about scouring, the erosion
around the structure, noting “bridge foundations determined to be
unstable for assessed or calculated scour conditions.”
However, evaluators did not find evidence of
extensive scouring and wrote the overall condition met the tolerable
limits to be left in place.
The Cape May County Bridge Commission owns the
bridge, and Linda Gilles, its interim executive director, said she was
unaware of the potential for scouring damage. She said the commission is
in the early stages of authorizing substructure repairs to it and two
other bridges, but it was too early to know the schedule.
The Cape May County Bridge Commission spent $3.4
million between 2006 and 2008 enabling it to lift weight restrictions.
The bridge made news in February 2011, when two teens in an SUV tore
though rusted bridge railings and plunged into the inlet water, escaping
without injury. The railings were replaced last year.
Other low-rated bridges include a pair of
crossings on Somers Point-Mays Landing Road in Egg Harbor Township.
Those bridges, over the Patcong and English creeks, were rated 16 and
17, respectively.
Another bridge on that road, across Lakes Creek, was rated at 57. However, it too was considered structurally deficient.
The English Creek bridge has been closed since
Tropical Storm Irene in August 2011 and is scheduled to be replaced by
Atlantic County this summer.
The database shows the least sufficient major
bridges in this region are the series of spans that link the Manahawkin
section of Stafford Township with Long Beach Island.
Even before Hurricane Sandy, federal evaluators
determined these four bridges, built in the late 1950s, had sufficiency
ratings between 32 and 48. This is important, as they carry between
11,000 and 47,000 vehicles per day, depending on the season.
The bridges are scheduled to be replaced over the
next several years as part of the $350 million Route 72 Manahawkin Bay
Bridges project, according to the state Department of Transportation.
The project will repair and update the bridges as well as add new lanes
for pedestrians and bicyclists.
In Atlantic City, meanwhile, people are still regarding the Ohio Avenue bridge with suspicion.
Its most recent evaluation determined the roadway
surface on the 80-foot bridge was in good condition and the
superstructure was rated satisfactory, but the substructure was
considered to be in poor condition.
Federal evaluators last year determined the
bridge’s sufficiency rating was 40 of 100, and its overall condition was
tolerable within federal guidelines to be left in place.
However, older evaluations show the bridge had
declined in recent years. A 2010 survey noted the substructure was in
fair condition and gave the span a sufficiency rating of 55. The
substructure was satisfactory in 2000, with a 65 rating, while in 1992,
all aspects of the bridge were rated good, and it had an 88 rating.
On Wednesday night city Engineer William England
told City Council the repairs necessary for reopening the Venice Park
bridge likely will be done in phases. He said he has been in contact
with the state Department of Transportation, including as late as 4:30
p.m. Wednesday.
“As of this moment, I'm in process of filling out
applications for the work and for emergency funding,” he said. “I
should have a little more information next week as far as scheduling.”
Anthony Cox, a Venice Park resident, said he
trusts the region’s public officials to detect structural problems
before they became critical. “It’s a bit of an inconvenience,” the
48-year-old said of the detour, but “it’s a necessary inconvenience.”
But for Johnson, the closed bridge was indicative of wider problems in the resort.
“They keep saying ‘Do AC,’” Johnson said. “My motto is ‘Fix AC, then Do AC.’ That’s how I feel.”
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