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Grosse Ile official: engineers find no additional damage to toll bridge; traffic controls continue
Summary
A township representative said engineers found no new wear on the toll bridge after a recent inspection, but the township has contracted Riverview Police Department and added officers and signal timing changes to reduce stress on the structure and keep one bridge open.
Joe, a representative of Grosse Ile Township, said Thursday that engineers who inspected the toll bridge found no additional wear attributable to recent traffic loads.
"Yesterday, we had three engineers go onto the toll bridge from H and H, and what they were looking for is any damage or, any type of problem that may be caused by the extra weight that we put on the bridge," Joe said. "Now since our last inspection, they stated that, there is no more wear and tear."
The inspection examined the center span, welds and other components that could be affected by increased loads, Joe said. He added that the township has taken operational steps to limit concentrated stress on the structure: it contracted with the Riverview Police Department to handle traffic on the Riverview side of the bridge during rush hours, and the township is using overtime and reserve officers on the Grosse Ile side.
"What we're trying to do each time when we look at this and tweak it is to get more people away from the intersection and actually people to get through," Joe said, citing intersections at Bridge Road and Meridian and Bridge Road and Jefferson as focus points for traffic control and signal timing adjustments.
Joe said the township has altered signal timing several times to improve traffic flow and reduce the risk of overloading specific bridge components. He warned that increasing allowable loads or permitting escorted heavy vehicles could endanger the bridge's mechanical parts — particularly the swing span — and lead to long outages.
"If we do anything to that bridge to break any of the mechanical pieces on it, especially in the swing span, we could be down for days, we could be down for weeks," he said. "That's possibly we could be down for months because all those pieces, anything that breaks or wears out has to be fabricated. We can't just go buy them."
Joe said the township's short-term goal for the next two months is to keep at least one bridge open, and he asked the public to follow traffic-control measures intended to minimize concentrated weight on the toll bridge. He said the township will release additional information if it becomes available.
