LR-NLR I-30 bridge must go, U.S. decides

The Interstate 30 bridge in downtown Little Rock is shown in this 2014 file photo.
The Interstate 30 bridge in downtown Little Rock is shown in this 2014 file photo.

Federal officials now agree that the Interstate 30 bridge over the Arkansas River needs to be replaced and not refurbished as part of a project to remake the I-30 corridor through North Little Rock and Little Rock at a cost of up to $450 million.

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FILE — The Interstate 30 bridge over the Arkansas River is shown in this 2014 file photo.

Engineers working on the project initially concluded in July that the bridge would need to be replaced, but the Federal Highway Administration, which has final approval over the project, wanted the engineers to fully vet all options as part of a mandated review of the entire corridor, a process that includes weighing social, environmental and economic factors before reaching a conclusion.

Earlier this month, a deeper analysis of the bridge condition led engineers to determine that, while it might cost more on the front end to build a new bridge, it would last longer and thus be less expensive than to rehabilitate the bridge, said Jerry Holder, a Garver engineering executive who is managing the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department's Connecting Arkansas Program.

The I-30 corridor project is a part of the Connecting Arkansas Program.

The project is one of 35 spread across 19 corridors around the state that are the focus of the Connecting Arkansas Program. The $1.8 billion program is financed by a temporary half-percentage-point increase in the state sales tax, which voters approved in November 2012. The tax is scheduled to expire in 2023.

Final design and construction of the I-30 corridor project isn't scheduled to begin until 2017 and after the Broadway Bridge is replaced.

"Can it be rehabbed?" Holder said of the I-30 bridge in an interview this week. "Yes. Can it last a long time? No. It's like the roof on your house. You can only fix the roof so many times before it becomes more expensive to [continue to] fix it rather than replace it."

The concurrence of federal officials came in a meeting last week held with elected leaders and transportation planners to review the latest screening of potential alternatives to ease congestion and increase safety over the 6.7-mile corridor that stretches from Interstate 530 to the west and Interstate 40 and U.S. 67/167 to the east.

"It's obvious they don't have any choice but to build a new bridge," said Jim McKenzie, executive director of Metroplan, the long-range transportation planning agency for central Arkansas.

The initial list of 43 project options -- such as whether to widen the corridor from six lanes to eight or 10 -- was pared down this summer to 38 after the first level of screening to assess the financial viability of each option. The next level of screening eliminated eight more options, including rehabilitating and widening the bridge, Holder said.

That second screening level used a qualitative analysis to assess each alternative based on mobility, safety, environment and cost, he said. That analysis produced various negative and positive scores for each factor. Alternatives that received a combined zero or negative score were dropped from the list, Holder said.

The remaining 30 alternatives and the eight that were dropped will be available for review and public comment at a meeting Jan. 29 at the Friendly Chapel Church of the Nazarene at 116 S. Pine St. in North Little Rock.

The bridge, which was built in 1958 and carries 125,000 vehicles daily, remains safe but has several problems, which if addressed separately, would cost close to the price of a new bridge but wouldn't last as long, Holder said. A new bridge built to a standard would be designed to last 75 years, he said.

Among the issues:

• The I-30 bridge is a "fracture-critical bridge," which means it wasn't designed -- as bridges are now -- with redundancies that ensure a bridge will be able to, according to the Federal Highway Administration, "perform its design function in a damaged state." If one major element of a "fracture-critical" bridge fails, risk exists that much or all of the bridge would fail. The Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis, which collapsed in 2007, killing 13 people and injuring 145, was a "fracture-critical" bridge.

• One pier, which is in the Arkansas River navigation channel, has a crack below the water line. To repair it would require encasing it in concrete. The additional concrete would reduce the width of the navigation channel, which already is too narrow for modern U.S. Coast Guard standards and has long been the target of criticism by barge operators. The main channel is 210 feet wide while Coast Guard standards require a 300-foot channel.

• Steel beams in the bridge superstructure have fatigue cracks, which Holder likened to what can happen to a metal coat hanger that is bent back and forth many times before finally breaking.

• If the bridge was only refurbished, the department would have to retrofit it to make it more resistant to earthquakes. The new bridge will be designed with some tolerance to earthquakes. The location of the bridge is on the southern edge of the New Madrid seismic zone; bridges in Pulaski County are at risk for slight damage from an earthquake with a magnitude of at least 7 on the enhanced Richter scale, according to the Arkansas Earthquake Center.

Traffic crossing the river would be maintained as the new bridge is built, engineers previously have said. One half of the new bridge will be built next to the existing bridge. Once that half is built, traffic on the existing bridge would be shifted to the new structure, the existing bridge would be removed and the other half of the new bridge would be built in its place.

It is unclear what impact the decision to replace the bridge rather than refurbish it will have on the project's price tag. Department officials say their estimated cost is between $300 million and $450 million. That includes engineering, acquiring right of way, relocating utilities and construction.

The department also is closely monitoring the actual receipts from the sales tax, which has fallen below projections so far, though the gap between what was estimated and what was actually collected is falling.

Highway Department Director Scott Bennett said at an Arkansas Highway Commission meeting earlier this month that the department is trimming the scope of some of the early projects to ensure enough money is available for the later projects in the 10-year program.

The state has collected $219,637,259.11 in state sales-tax revenue for the department since the program's inception. The figure is $2,402,740.89, or 1.08 percent, less than forecast.

The decision to replace the bridge would more likely make it a candidate for bridge replacement funds, a category of federal transportation money the department receives annually and that can be spent only on replacing bridges.

But the verdict is out on whether the cost of the corridor project will exceed the department's estimates.

"We're determining our needs," said Randy Ort, a department spokesman. "We're determining the options to meet those needs and the cost of those options. If there are ways to augment the funding, we'll do it. But this in and of itself doesn't make the project more expensive."

A section on 12/25/2014

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