GREENFIELD — The 85-year-old bridge that allows people to cross from Leyden to Colrain roads and vice versa was closed on Wednesday morning for at least the next year, which means drivers who took that route will now have to take a 3½-mile detour to get to where they’re going.
Crossing over the Green River at the Green River Swimming and Recreation Area, Nash’s Mill Road bridge will be replaced by New England Infrastructure Inc., which has been contracted by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation at a cost of $2,590,815. Work is expected to be complete by October 2019.
Message boards were installed earlier this month to provide advanced notice of the road closure to motorists. The bridge will be closed to both motorists and pedestrians, and a detour to guide people around the closure for the duration of the project has been mapped out — residents will have to travel down Conway, Elm and Colrain streets and Colrain Road.
MassDOT will provide information on activities and traffic impacts as they become available.
The project will include replacing the bridge, widening shoulders and installing new sidewalks. The new, single-span, 105-foot steel beam bridge will be wider, and will include 10-foot lanes, 4-foot shoulders and a 5-foot sidewalk on the south side. The project will be funded through the 2018 Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) for the Franklin Regional Council of Governments.
The state TIP, run by MassDOT, prioritizes transportation projects across the state. In May 2017, MassDOT held a public hearing on replacement plans for the bridge built in 1933.
“The bridge has been determined to be ‘functionally obsolete’ and ‘structurally deficient.” The bridge now has a weight restriction and one lane open. Perkins said the replacement will be “designed to support all current vehicle weights,” said Peter Perkins, a structural engineer at Clough Harbour & Associates, the design firm hired by the city for the project, during meetings and public hearings the city held in 2017 about the bridge and its replacement.
The final design of the project, overseen by the city, was approved in March.
During the deed search — in preparation for the project application — an unclaimed 1,580-square-foot parcel of land in the middle of the Green River was discovered. To complete the application and begin the funding and construction cycle, clarification of the parcel ownership was required. It was discovered that the parcel had no owner and no deed, and is surrounded by town-owned land and water, according to the mayor. In a special City Council meeting in December 2017, councilors approved the city’s acquisition of the land rights for the purpose of the construction and maintenance of the bridge on Nash’s Mill Road.
Some people, including City Councilor-at-large Isaac Mass, have voiced concern about closing a major route for people traveling from west to east Greenfield, but according to officials, including former Greenfield Public Works Director Donald Ouellette, the bridge is a safety issue. According to a 2013 traffic study by the state, “approximately 6,980 vehicles, 6 percent of which is estimated to be truck traffic,” traverse the bridge each day.