Officials move to replace bridge

May 4, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

By jeanne starmack

youngstown

The county engineer’s office is moving toward replacing the Division Street Bridge over the Mahoning River.

The 73-year-old, 193-feet-long, 22-feet-wide truss bridge is going to be replaced in 2014 with a 210-feet-long, 30-feet-wide, three-span steel-beam bridge.

The project will cost $2.8 million, with the county and city each paying $280,000. The rest will come from federal highway money.

The engineer’s office hosted a public involvement meeting Thursday evening at the Eastgate Regional Council of Governments offices on Federal Street.

Randy Partika, the county’s bridge engineer, said the meeting was a necessary step in Phase I of the project.

The bridge is being replaced for safety reasons, Partika said. Of the 1,200 vehicles that use the bridge each day, 360 of them are trucks, he said.

The bridge primarily serves the Ohio Works Industrial Park, which now includes 10 businesses, he said. But the park has more available land, and companies that serve the nearby V&M Star plant might be interested in locating there, he said.

The bridge, which connects U.S. Route 422 and Salt Springs Road, also is convenient for V&M Star employees from Youngstown’s West Side and communities west of the city, Partika said.

Before construction begins, the county will relocate a waterline that serves V&M Star. The waterline now hangs on the side of the bridge; the new waterline will be under the river Partika said.

When construction does begin in the spring of 2014, the bridge will be closed for eight to nine months, Partika said. He said there won’t be a temporary bridge.

“Ohio Works Industrial Park will access out to Salt Spring, and V&M [traffic] will go to 422, where the majority goes now,” he said.