It's 8 bells, end of road for Broadway Bridge; span closes at 10 a.m.

Construction workers (bottom right) install wood planks under the Broadway Bridge to support heavy equipment that will be used to begin dismantling the bridge between Little Rock and North Little Rock after officials close it in ceremonies this morning.
Construction workers (bottom right) install wood planks under the Broadway Bridge to support heavy equipment that will be used to begin dismantling the bridge between Little Rock and North Little Rock after officials close it in ceremonies this morning.

"Eight bells" will be struck today for the Broadway Bridge.

The ringing of a ceremonial bell eight times will terminate the "final watch" for the 93-year-old bridge and signal that the 25,000 motorists who use it daily need to find another way to cross the Arkansas River.

The Broadway Bridge formally closes to traffic at 10 a.m.

By 11: 30 a.m., a construction team headed by Massman Construction Co. of Kansas City, Mo., will begin preparations to remove the bridge and replace it with a new one. The $98.4 million contract to replace the bridge calls for the new bridge to be open to traffic in six months.

[BROADWAY BRIDGE: Find traffic map, cameras, previous coverage, photos here]

For years, state and local officials as well as commuters have been expecting this day. Still, there was more than a little trepidation on the eve of the span closing.

"It's going to be a bumpy few months," a post on Little Rock's Facebook page read Tuesday afternoon. "There's no panacea, just patience on the part of all of us, and some creative thinking when it comes to work commutes."

To accommodate the changes in traffic patterns expected by the bridge's closure, traffic signals and signs have been adjusted in downtown Little Rock and North Little Rock.

Traffic engineers anticipate that much of the Broadway Bridge traffic will switch to the Main Street Bridge, connected by Maple Street in North Little Rock and Scott Street in Little Rock. They say the Main Street Bridge, which has a daily traffic count of about 12,000, has been underutilized. Until now.

Some of the changes include:

• Scott Street between Capitol and Sixth Street is now two-way. Scott Street had been two-way from the bridge to East Capitol Avenue. Scott Street now has two lanes north and one lane south from East Capitol to East Sixth, where drivers must turn right toward the state Capitol and the state office buildings around it.

• Traffic headed north on Scott Street won't be allowed to turn left onto East Markham Street in front of the Statehouse Convention Center. And traffic headed south off the Main Street Bridge won't be allowed to turn left onto East Markham.

• A left-turn arrow has been added for traffic turning north from East Third Street onto Scott Street.

• At East Fourth and Scott streets, the middle lane will be dedicated to a left turn north onto Scott. The left of the three lanes of the one-way street is already left-turn only.

• Morning and afternoon rush-hour trolley service will be suspended while the Broadway Bridge is closed. That is so the trolleys won't block traffic at the south end of the Main Street Bridge and in downtown North Little Rock.

• Traffic lights on Little Rock's Scott Street and downtown North Little Rock's Main Street will change from a 70-second cycle to a 90-second cycle in favor of north-south traffic. This cycle will be in operation from 7-9 a.m. and 4-6 p.m.

"Traffic engineering staff will be monitoring downtown to see how signal timing plans are operating to determine if any adjustments will be necessary," said Jennifer Godwin, a Little Rock spokesman. "This will be an ongoing issue that they will continuously monitor and adapt as conditions require and allow."

The Little Rock Police Department "will be monitoring the area for any traffic incidents but currently do not plan to have an increased presence downtown," she added.

Meanwhile, Rock Region Metro, which runs the bus transit system, is seeking to take advantage of the bridge closure and urging motorists to "Beat the Broadway Bridge Blues with Transit!"

Details are available at www.rrmetro.org. Bus service has already switched along five North Little Rock routes from the Broadway Bridge to the Main Street Bridge.

Rock Region Metro will run a streetcar shuttle over the Main Street Bridge, from the Verizon station to the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce station from 7-9 a.m. and from 3:45-6:30 p.m. for people who work or live in Argenta and downtown Little Rock, or people who park and want to ride. The schedule will be evaluated as time goes on.

The local ambulance service also is concerned about the effects of the bridge closure. It was a topic Tuesday of the Little Rock Ambulance Authority, which oversees Metropolitan Emergency Medical Services of Little Rock.

Executive Director Jon Swanson said MEMS had adjusted ambulance routes in anticipation of heavier traffic in certain areas of central Arkansas. MEMS serves about 530,000 residents in Pulaski, Faulkner, Grant and Lonoke counties.

Swanson said close attention will be paid to traffic on the Interstate 430 bridge, a primary route from North Little Rock to Arkansas Children's Hospital and UAMS Medical Center. He said MEMS is developing plans with the North Little Rock and Little Rock Police Departments to close certain intersections for critical ambulance traffic, when necessary.

"My concern is that if we have a critical child or adult that needs to get to University or Children's that we find ways that we can get through traffic as quickly as possible," Swanson said.

Swanson said MEMS has considered using helicopter transportation in handling some situations, but aerial transport is not always practical.

"That rare event is when time is most critical," he said.

Military officials and representatives of veterans organizations are making sure the old Broadway Bridge is given a proper send-off, in light of it being dedicated to honor Arkansans who fought and died in World War I. The bridge was dedicated just five years after the war ended.

A total of 71,862 soldiers from Arkansas served in the war, according to the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Of those, 2,183 died, more than half from illness rather than war injuries. Another 1,751 were wounded, according to the reference.

The bridge opened to traffic in 1922, but its formal dedication wasn't held until March 1923.

The ceremony to close the bridge will borrow heavily from the decommissioning ceremonies used to retire naval vessels. When a ship is decommissioned, its captain orders its bell struck eight times to end the final watch.

The ceremony is "fitting for this bridge" because a decommissioning ceremony for the bridge, like a ship, is terminating its active service, said Lt. Col. Joel Lynch, a public affairs official with the Arkansas National Guard.

"Decommissioning ceremonies are generally serious, if not sad, occasions ... and are conducted far less elaborately than those that bring a ship into service," according to Sea Flags, a website that says it is "devoted to images and information on the flags, pennants, customs, and ceremonies of the United States Navy and the other American seagoing services."

Today's ceremony is to begin at 10:45 a.m.

In helping put together the ceremony, Lynch said he has been surprised at the affection for the bridge through its association with the military. For many years, the bridge was used by Navy veterans as the site of their Veterans Day ceremony, during which a wreath was tossed off the bridge.

"There's a lot of emotional attachment to that bridge because of that, I've found," Lynch said.

A wreath also will be part of today's ceremony, though Lynch couldn't say Tuesday whether it was going to be thrown into the river.

In ending the bridge's watch, officials will be asked if the construction crew is prepared to take down the bridge and whether motorists have been notified that the bridge no longer will be in service, questions that are modeled after the decommissioning ceremony for ships.

But other ship-ceremony questions, such as whether the munition stores or the ship's rations have been removed, don't apply to today's ceremony, Lynch said.

The bell to be used in the ceremony is one that is used in military ceremonies at Camp Robinson in North Little Rock, the headquarters of the Arkansas National Guard, Lynch said.

Information for this article was contributed by Scott Carroll and Frank Fellone of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Metro on 09/28/2016

photo

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Rowland Willis (left) and Tyler Parsons of Time Striping Inc. put up detour signs Tuesday near Main Street and West Broadway in North Little Rock in preparation for today’s closing of the Broadway Bridge.

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