Bridge rehabilitation should be finished on 15 Chattanooga bridges by September, according to Tennessee Department of Transportation officials.

Construction crews finished work on southbound U.S. Highway 27 at the end of May and began work on northbound lanes after Riverbend. The $1.9 million project is ahead of schedule, said Jennifer Flynn, TDOT's spokeswoman for the Chattanooga area.

The project to repair the bridges began in mid-February. The bridges were structurally safe but had concrete coming off the decks and from underneath, Ms. Flynn said.

Nashville officials originally planned to reduce traffic to one lane for the duration of the project, which covers a two-mile stretch on U.S. 27 from the Interstate 24 split, she said. But officials in Chattanooga lobbied for a change of plans, asking if they could work nights, reducing the amount of traffic forced into one lane, Ms. Flynn said.

"It's been so successful that we're probably going to use it for some other bridge projects we've got coming up this summer," she said.

Those include construction on overpasses at Shallowford Road and Jersey Pike over state Highway 153.

The current concrete repairs will last 10 to 15 years, long enough for TDOT to begin a project to add lanes and frontage roads and widen U.S. 27, Ms. Flynn said. That plan is in the development stages but will eventually close the Manning Street exit off U.S. 27 North because the ramp is not long enough for federal standards, she said.

That proposed overhaul pleased some residents, who expressed opinions to the Times Free Press during a community forum in February.

"I was really happy to see that they added the 12th Street ramp back into the plan," said Barbara Koller, a resident of the Gateway Tower public housing development. "The first plan wasn't really taking into consideration the truck traffic off of Main Street."

The overhaul would not begin until at least 2011, according to Times Free Press archives.

Comments