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Date: 9/30/2020
SOUTHAMPTON – On Sept. 22, the Select Board heard an update on the progress of the East Street Bridge reconstruction planning that included a prognosis that the work could be completed by the end of the construction season in 2021.
John Furman, director of land development of Vanasse Hangen Brustlin Inc. in Springfield, the design consultant on the project, called the work a “fairly small project as far as bridges go.” Once the licenses involved are all secured and the project is put out to bid, work would be able to begin on demolition as soon as weather permits in February or March 2021, he said.
“Drop dead date as far as an end would go, we would expect that to be sometime first or middle of November [2021] because that’s when paving plants close,” Furman said. “We wouldn’t want to go any later than that otherwise we would have open roadway here.”
The proposed work would require the complete demolition of the current bridge and construction of a new structure. The result, according to the plans outlined by Furman, would be a bridge “much wider than what is out there already” with a single 12-foot lane in each direction and a two-foot shoulder on each side as well as what he referred to as a “multipath,” an 11-foot wide path for bicycles and pedestrians.
“We coordinated this with the current MassDOT plans for roadway projects,” he said. “Currently, when we do a project, they look for all projects to have some sort of accommodations for bikes and pedestrians."
Currently, the multipath is planned only for the bridge itself. He explained that when the East Street road project is undertaken, the goal is to extend the multipath from the bridge to the roadway westward into the center of town. He added it was unclear where it would go in the other direction.
The bridge construction would require closing the roadway for the better part of 2021. Furman said there was consideration given to a phased construction plan that would keep one half of the bridge open for the purpose of maintaining utilities, but even in that scenario, traffic would not have been allowed on the bridge.
“There was never a scenario with this bridge that it would remain open,” Furman said. “The structure is just too weak and if you start pulling away half of it, there was just no guarantee that it was going to be able to hold itself up.”
Furman said the firm had consulted with the National Parks Service’s National Heritage Area Program and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and the Conservation Commission regarding stormwater mitigation. In the current plan, water would flow to catch basins called Stormcepters to remove contaminants as well as a series of step-down trenches, which create a water quality swale to trap any sediment not captured by the basins, before flowing into the river.
“The DEP wanted to have some improvement – with this being a cold water fishery, we need to get rid of the sediments,” he said.
The bridge would also be designed to allow wildlife to pass underneath from one side to the other.
While water service would remain when the water main at the bridge is shut off, disconnecting the gas line attached to the bridge would halt service to anyone on the other side. In response, the gas company plans to install a new line under the river to maintain service and keep the utility off the bridge.
After going through the process with MassDEP and the Conservation Commission for approval, Furman said he believed MassDOT had received the most current plans as of Sept. 18 and expected to get through the review process within 30 days.
A Rare Species Survey still needs doing, but Furman said the suggestion by National Heritage was to hold off until further along in the process because the surveys are only valid for 14 months.
Also, a Chapter 91 waterways license is still needed, however, and complication arose during that process.
“We had intended to update the Chapter 91 license that was there for the additional bridge and found in our coordination with the agency, we found out the original bridge didn’t have one, so we have to re-do it and basically file for a new water license,” Furman said.
As a result, instead of a 30- to 60-day review process, the wait is anticipated to be three to six months, he added.
Once that process is completed and the license approved, the project can go out to bid with a six-week window.
Furman clarified that the bridge project would not happen simultaneously with plans to resurface East Street. Because the width of the bridge exceeds that of the road, he explained the contractor would taper the pavement to blend with the existing roadway.
Select Board Chair Maureen Groden explained the bridge became the first phase of plan to totally reconstruct East Street after the funding for the bridge was made available first.
“[In] 2025, Southampton is in line for rehabilitation of East Street from College Highway to County Road, 2.6 miles,” she said. “That’s $496,200. That’s still in line for state and federal funding, so that is the hope – that that will be the timetable. It’s still a ways off, but the plan is to work on from the bridge to College Highway and then from the bridge to County Road.
Resident Michael Rosenberg voiced concerns with the lengthy delay in the completion of the road refurbishment project. He noted that as a former member of the Master Plan Committee, he recalled that East Street was among one of the most heavily traveled roads in town.
“Four more years is not going to do the road any good, so in the interim, is there going to be any money invested in it?” he asked. “Because, I’ll be honest with you, I leave my house and I’ll drive down Pleasant Street instead of driving all the way to College Highway because that section is pretty bad.”
Groden said the difficulty with allocating funding for the road was the need to pay for large capital needs such as the Public Safety Complex and the Senior Center and a lack of state assistance.
“Clearly the worst road in town is East Street and certainly we’re going to be reaching out to [state Sen.] John Velis and [state Rep.] Lindsay Sabadosa and see if additional funds are available, but right now, there hasn’t been a lot of money. There’s been a huge reduction in state aid as it is,” she said. “But certainly, if opportunities become available, we’ll go after them.”