Cedar, Knox counties are working together on bridges

HARTINGTON – Cedar and Knox counties are planning to bundle two bridge replacement projects together.

Carla Schmidt, Cedar County’s highway superintendent, reminded the county board of commissioners on May 23 about the Knox County supervisors choosing a contractor for their bridge replacement project on May 25.

Schmidt and Cedar County Board Chairman Dave McGregor traveled to Center for the Knox County board meeting.

The Knox County supervisors awarded their bridge replacement project to Herbst Construction Inc. of rural Le Mars, Iowa, which submitted the lowest of the three bids of just over $1.3 million.

Cedar County’s bridge replacement project will be on the agenda for the commissioners’ June 13 meeting, with the commissioners expected to approve Herbst Construction – which submitted the lowest bid at just over $1.1 million – to work on it.

The two bridge replacement projects have been bundled together through the Nebraska Department of Transportation’s County Bridge Match Program because the new crossings are similar.

“With the Bridge Match Program, we will get reimbursed $250,000 of that ($1.1 million),” Schmidt said in a follow-up interview.

She noted why counties bundle these kinds of projects together.

“The premise is, you should get a better price because the contractor’s getting two bridges in the process, so that they would hopefully bid a little cheaper,” Schmidt said.

The Cedar County project will replace the current bridge that crosses over the Bow Creek on 883rd Road about 1.25 miles east of Hartington.

She described the current crossing – a 100-foot-long pony truss bridge built in 1973 out of concrete and steel – as “structurally deficient.”

“It’s outdated,” Schmidt said. “It’s load-rated. Right now, it’s got a 13-ton weight limit on it.”

She noted pony truss bridges such as the one that is going to be replaced are typically older structures.

“It’s difficult to get equipment and stuff down them because they’re not as wide,” Schmidt said, comparing them to more modern bridges.

“This has got that big truss that goes way up and arches over,” he said. “You can’t even lift equipment high enough to get it over it.”

The new crossing will be a 130-footlong, 28-foot-wide concrete-slab bridge that will have no weight limit.

The projected time period for work on this bridge replacement project has been set for January-May 2024.

“Weather always plays a factor in that,” Schmidt said of how the work schedule could be affected.

The crossing that will be replaced in Knox County is a steel truss bridge on 513th Avenue that spans the Ponca Creek just south of Highway 12, about three miles west of Verdel.

“It’s structurally deficient and functionally deficient,” Knox County Highway Superintendent Kevin Barta said in a follow-up interview. “It’s too narrow and it doesn’t have a good enough weight limit.”

He also described the current crossing as a “fracture critical bridge.”

“With a multiple-beam bridge, you have seven or eight beams,” Barta said. “One of those beams may fail, but the bridge won’t collapse.But this is an old-style bridge where you have the two big steel trusses – one on each side – and if one of them fails, the bridge will fail.”

The current 101-foot-long crossing – known as the Shaw Bridge and built in 1976 – with a 12-ton weight limit will be replaced by a 150-foot-long concrete-slab structure that will not have a weight limit on it.

“It’ll be an all-concrete structure – steel piling, but an all-concrete deck and guardrail,” Barta said of the replacement bridge, with work on the project scheduled to take place beginning in December.