It won’t be for years, but at least two long-awaited bridge projects are on the state’s Transportation Improvement Plan for Franklin County.
Northfield’s long-closed 1903 Schell Bridge is listed as a 2021 bicycle and pedestrian bridge project by the state Department of Transportation, the Franklin Regional Planning Board was told. The project, part of a three-state bike path loop, seen by Northfield as a boon to recreational tourism, has an estimated price tag of $18.7 million.
“Oh my God! I hope I live that long,” said Jennifer Tufts, former president of Friends of the Schell Bridge when she was told the news. “It’s thrilling news. I’m very hopeful this project will move forward at last.”
For more than 80 years until its 1985 closure, the steel-truss cantilever bridge over the Connecticut River linked east and west Northfield, the only crossing between the Route 10 bridge two miles south, and the Route 119 bridge 11 miles north, which links West Chesterfield, N.H., and Brattleboro, Vt.
Its replacement, which was estimated by the state at $5 million, according to a Recorder article in 2014, was being based on a Keene, N.H., bike bridge that was inspired by the Schell.
A feasibility and evaluation study has recently been completed by the state, and the state is now moving ahead with planning for that project using statewide Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement program money, the planning board was told.
Also listed on the transportation plan as of last week is the General Pierce Bridge, connecting East Greenfield and Montague City, in 2019.
That 70-year-old bridge, which has been patched by road crews in recent months because of holes in its decking, was slated for major rehabilitation in 2007, work that was never done to avoid coinciding with repairs that were planned for the Turners Falls-Gill Bridge and were completed this year.
Four years ago, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials rated the bridge a 42 out of 100, with anything below a 50 rating seen as needing complete replacement, according to Maureen Mullaney, transportation planning manager for Franklin Regional Council of Governments.
Mullaney said the bridge, over the confluence of the Connecticut and Deerfield rivers, was added “much to all of our happiness” to the active construction list, not an “in-the-future appendix.”
She said it has an extensive design that needs to be done, and may need to be replaced entirely, with the hope that its aesthetic qualities will remain if that’s the case.
“It’s a mess of a bridge at the moment, but it’s a beautiful bridge,” she said.
The state has classified the 70-year-old bridge as “structurally deficient,” and some of those attending Thursday’s regional planning board meeting expressed frustration that the project — estimated at $20.7 million — isn’t listed to be done for three more years.
Peter Tusinski of Leyden said, “It’s been a known fact that the General Pierce Bridge has been a lousy bridge for the last eight years, if not more, and yet it’s not at the top of the list or any list I’ve seen.”
Mullaney said the cost of the project, along with wanting to delay it until after the Turners Falls-Gill project was completed, has kept the state from listing it until now.
Among the projects listed for the coming year on the plan are improvements at the intersection of Routes 2 and 2A in Erving, the Colrain-Shelburne Road intersection with Route 2 in Shelburne, the final portion of Greenfield Road reconstruction in Montague, the McClellan Farm Road bridge over railroad tracks in Deerfield, and Sadoga Road over Burrington Road in Heath.
Also on the list is a program to install bicycle racks around the region this fall.
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