The Gulf Road bridge over Interstate 90 awaits concrete Tuesday. ODOT officials say wet weather has delayed the reconstruction of the bridge. (CT photo by Chuck Humel.)
The Ohio Department of Transportation said Tuesday it plans to reopen the rebuilt Gulf Road bridge over Interstate 90 by late November.
“We’ve had questions of late over how weather has delayed us,” said Christine Myers, spokeswoman for the ODOT District 3 offices in Ashland, which oversees all work on state roads and bridges in an eight-county area of Northeast Ohio that includes Lorain County. “Weather has been huge for us. We’ve obviously had significant delays of three to four weeks due to rain.”
Crews had hoped to pour the bridge’s new concrete deck last week, but that work was delayed by rain as well, Myers said.
“With the rain we had last week, that work was not likely completed,” she said.
No specific date has been set for the bridge being reopened, but Myers indicated it would most likely occur the week after Thanksgiving.
Work on the $2 million state-funded project began in April and was originally slated to be completed by Oct. 31.
The project calls for replacement of the 308-foot-long bridge built in 1970. When completed, the new span will include a composite reinforced concrete deck and three new vertical piers at both ends of the span, as well as a fourth new pier in the middle of the bridge.
The bridge reconstruction is being done by Mosser Construction, a Fremont firm whose credits include the Ohio Turnpike bridge over the Maumee River and the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies at Oberlin College.
Heavy rainfall in September and October led to construction work being halted on a number of days, and limited to a few hours on others, according to Myers, who explained that bad weather was factored into the project’s timetable.
“We had about three to four weeks of rain delays built in, due to the weather we’ve been having,” she said.
The exceedingly soggy weather was also blamed for delaying welding work on the bridge’s steel frame.
Any work that remains to be done — principally painting of the bridge — may wait until next spring, Myers said.
The state also repaved a portion of Abbe Road at the same time work began on the new bridge. The repaved road, which was completed some weeks ago, runs from the state Route 57 bypass north to Loyola Street near Lorain County Community College.
Northbound Gulf Road traffic will continue to be detoured to Burns Road, east on Burns Road to state Route 301 (Abbe Road) north on Route 301 to state Route 254, west on Route 254 to Gulf Road. The reverse route applies for southbound motorists.
Contact Steve Fogarty at 329-7146 or sfogarty@chroniclet.com.
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