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The county's second phase of the bridge-bundling program is moving ahead as planned with the Lycoming County Commissioners' approval to award Wolyniec Construction Inc.'s bid of $1,776,177 for the work.
The bridges in bundle 2 slated for work are located in Jersey Shore and Loyalsock, Franklin, Susquehanna and Moreland townships. Waterline relocation work in Jersey Shore and Loyalsock Township is also included in this second round. Work on this bundle is set to begin around the beginning of April.
The bridge-bundling concept allows municipalities to contract work as a group rather than approaching it individually.
"What that means is, the people who live there are not going to have their property taxes go up because they have to pay an outrageous amount to fix a bridge there," said Commissioner Rick Mirabito.
"The 5% that those municipalities are paying is really bringing it into an affordable price for them. That's a good program." Mirabito added.
Bridge-bundle 3 is also set for construction this year with another five bridges on that list.
Those bridges are located in Gamble Township on Winner Lane; Mifflin Township on Zinck Road; Montgomery Borough at Montgomery Park Road; Penn Township on Logue Hill Road; and Wolf Township on Penn Drive
"This will be the biggest year of the bundling program," said Britt Bassett, of Bassett Engineering. "We'll be averaging better than a bridge a month between May and October about two a month."
Bridges in the second bundle are pre-cast with the more expensive box culverts in Jersey Shore and Loyalsock Township. The bridge slated for work in Loyalsock Township is located near Faxon Bowling Lanes.
Bundle 3 consists entirely of Geosynthetic reinforced soil foundations and abutments, combined with precast concrete plank beams and concrete decks. GRS Abutments are suitable where stream velocities do not exceed 12 feet per second, according to information from the county.
"A lot of the activity is pretty broadly dispersed around the county geographically," Bassett said.
"Everyone should be able to be driving by one of these bridges. So many will be on highly visible roads like 654 in Susquehanna Township and 442 in Moreland Township," Bassett said. "Everyone will be able to see that we're actually doing something with the money we're spending, which is highly important."
Designs for Bundle 4 will begin this year with construction expected next year.
All 17 bridges in the program will be built by the end of next year, Bassett said.
Small bridge inspections continue in the county, according to Shannon Rossman. There are 102 bridges that fall into that category and are inspected according to the state's transportation department guidelines.
"Now we have a small bridge inspection program that was sidelined for a few years," Rossman said, adding that there really was no requirement for that. "They were not being inspected. We're back to doing that at the county level."
"In the future, I think this will be very beneficial, especially for a small bridge," Rossman said.
Bridges that are over 20-feet long have federal inspection requirements, while bridges from eight feet up to that have none.
"There were no requirements, just municipalities doing their own due diligence," Rossman noted.
"Now, we know that they're getting inspected. We know that they're getting notified if there's an emergency.
One problem is that bridges do deteriorate even if they have been inspected.
"It's a curve. Once a bridge starts to go, that accelerates. In fact, one of the bridges under bundle 3, Montgomery closed the bridge," Bassett said.
The bridge which will remain closed this summer is at the Little League field and boat ramp.
"They're going to keep it closed until we replace it because it got that bad that quickly," he said.
Funding for the bridge-bundling program comes from a $5 fee attached to vehicle registrations that is collected by the state and comes back to the county, earmarked for bridge repair and replacement. A certain amount of funding comes from individual municipalities.
"Even though some of these bridges are very rural in nature, there's a lot of small businesses and tourism that happens out in our rural areas," Rossman said.
'The beauty of this program is the $5 fee really prevents property taxes from having to go up, which hits a very small group of people in the county and especially hits people who are seniors and on fixed income," Mirabito said.
"For example, in Washington Township, that bridge was initially estimated to cost $800,000 to repair," he added.
It was noted that the annual budget for a municipality might be only one-fourth that amount which would mean that it would take several years to repair the bridge.
"Those municipalities are then faced with having to raise taxes an incredible amount. So, instead they become part of a program that takes a loan and that $5 fee pays the loan payment and we amortize it over ten years and we pay that loan payment with it and then the municipality kicks in 5% of the cost of the bridge repair," Mirabito said. "So, maybe they're kicking in $40,000 or something which they can handle."
Although not every municipality in the county has a bridge that needs to be repaired at this time, while other areas have more than one bridge scheduled for repair, Rossman pointed out that we all use bridges whether we actually live in those communities.
"The fact is, I may not live in Loyalsock Township, but I drive over that bridge if I want to go bowling or if I want to go to my doctor's office," she said.
"You have to think where do you drive in the county, and if you're going fishing, you're going to be driving over one of these bridges," she added.