March 9

A bridge still closed – 15th Ave. span now waiting for three days without rain

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Almost there … but not until it stops raining.

That’s the word from the city Department of Transportation about the 15th Avenue bridge reopening, which should have been about now.

And, in fact, it’s about ready, according to e-mails between Joshua Newman, president of the Maple Leaf Community Council, and Kit Loo, of SDOT.

When we last wrote about the bridge, which closed May 17 for repairs and upgrades, it was waiting for a concrete overlay on the deck surface. That work was expected to require seven rainless days. In a row.

THAT hasn’t happened. Instead, it rained for 22 of February’s 28 days.(Heck, have you looked outside today? It rained another half-inch between daybreak and noon.)

The city and the bridge contractors have puzzled out a way to cut the needed dry spell to three days, but even that is not in the forecast.

According to Loo’s e-mail on Tuesday:

If we were able to get the good clear weather window, the Contractor had anticipated completing the project by next week.

But as you can see the weather has stymied our efforts. We have been working with the Contractor to figure out some ways to work around the short weather windows that is typical during this time of the year. We have been able to work out a plan that has compressed the weather window down to at least 3 days without rain.

Once the weather cooperates and the concrete (yes, it’s still going to be concrete, @chris), overlay is down, it will take about ten additional work days to open the bridge, Loo said.

We had also looked into the possibility of suspending work and opening the bridge temporarily… in consultation with Metro regarding the re-routes, the costs, and the confusion that drivers may have regarding the re-opening and reclosing the bridge in order to complete the overlay, suspending the work to future date was not an attractive option.

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Sara W

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  1. Thanks for the update. I think this is the perfect example of the type of story a neighborhood blog would pay attention to that would get buried or ignored even in city-wide media.

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