Risky bridges | Even the smallest of Maine's 288 problem bridges puts a damper on the local economy

Bridgton's town manager, Mitchell Berkowitz, has a little problem.
Last summer, a few weeks after Berkowitz started his job, the Maine Department of Transportation told him they'd have to shut down one of his bridges, a steel-framed connector built in 1943.

Berkowitz, a no-frills lifelong public servant, had to see for himself. So he and Bridgton's public works director drove the couple blocks from the Bridgton town offices near Main Street, which also functions as Route 302, to Depot Street and the Walker's Shop Bridge. Depot Street is a narrow, rugged road that bows out from the densest blocks of Main Street and connects back to it a few blocks down. The street has long been a popular shortcut for cars shopping on Main or visiting the Depot Street community center. If you weren't looking for a bridge on this quiet road, you might not notice Walker's Shop. About a quarter mile away from Bridgton's downtown, back near the old Bridgton Memorial School, the road is suddenly lined with low metal fencing for a stretch about as long as four car lengths. That's the bridge.

Berkowitz headed to the grassy shoulder along Stevens Brook and leaned down to look across the underside of Walker's. That's when he noticed that the metal beams were so rusted, he says, he "could see daylight through them." Though he says the MDOT offered to close the bridge in 60 to 90 days, Berkowitz had them shut it down immediately. If it wouldn't be safe in 60 days, he says, it probably wasn't safe that June day.

The following January, the Walker's Shop Bridge showed up on the MDOT's list of 288 public bridges at risk of being posted or closed within the next 10 years. It appeared alongside some of the state's largest bridges and plenty of small rural ones that, like Walker's, are important economic lifelines. In a report to the state's Transportation Committee accompanying the list, MDOT's engineering committee noted that the state agency has enough funding to replace only 14 of the 32 bridges that should be retired every year.
The MDOT's $815 million capital improvement proposal for 2008-2009, including $131 million in bond funding and hundreds of millions in federal aid, is 30% higher than the 2006-2007 budget. That's enough to maintain existing infrastructure like the highway network, according to the MDOT, but the agency's chief bridge engineer says his office won't receive enough to completely address the backlog of bridges caused by years of underfunding.

Which takes us back to Berkowitz and his blip of a bridge. In the midst of what the advocacy group the Maine Better Transportation Association is calling a "crisis" in transportation infrastructure, Berkowitz is well aware his little Walker's Shop Bridge is not high on the MDOT's to-do list.

But Walker's Shop, despite its shrimpiness, is a big player in the Bridgton economy. Businesses in the downtown and along Depot Street, including the Reny's store (which is scheduled for a $2 million expansion this year) and the new, $2 million Magic Lantern Movie Theater (which plans to open this fall) rely on Depot Street to keep customer traffic flowing away from the perpetually crowded Main Street. This year, the town received a $342,000 federal grant to manage that traffic; much of the money will be used to build a 107-space parking lot on Depot. Now that the bridge is closed, drivers leaving the Depot businesses or using what will be the downtown's largest parking lot must either detour down an unmarked road past an elementary school or head back to Main Street the way they came in a space barely wide enough for a three-point turn.

"That closing is one of inconvenience," says Berkowitz. "And it may in fact create a negative perception about coming back and supporting us in the downtown. That's commerce and economics."

Life spans
Businesses and downtowns cramped by problem bridges aren't news to Dana Connors, president of the Maine State Chamber of Commerce in Augusta. "Sometimes we lose sight of how fundamentally important transportation infrastructure and bridges are ˆ— until you lose them," says Connors, who before leading the chamber served as commissioner of the state's Department of Transportation from 1984 to 1994.

According to Frank Moretti, director of policy and research at TRIP, a research group in Washington D.C. that advocates for highway funding, about 14% of Maine's bridges are structurally deficient, compared with a national average of about 12%. The worst state for bridges in the country, Oklahoma, currently has 27% of its bridges below structural standards, while the best state, Arizona, is benefiting from recent investments in new infrastructure with only two percent of its bridges below federal standards.

While nationwide, funding for transportation projects has diminished in part because of the rising costs of construction equipment, Moretti says the Northeast may be the hardest hit by slimming bridge budgets, since many of the area's bridges are among the oldest in the country.

Roughly half of Maine's state-owned bridges are more than 50 years old, and 239 of them have exceeded normal service life of 80 years, according to the MDOT. Six of these old bridges are currently scheduled for capital improvement, and about 25 are rarely used.
Maine's transportation budget is a combination of federal funds earmarked for certain projects, state tax revenue from vehicle gas, the state highway fund and the occasional transportation bond. MDOT's proposed $815 million budget does not provide enough money to maintain all of the 2,604 bridges the state is responsible for, says James Foster, the MDOT's chief bridge management engineer. Unsafe bridges are posted or closed and put on a wait list.

The waiting list for bridge repairs can be subjective, to the consternation of those lobbying for a particular span to be fixed. "It's a balance of replacing bridges and preserving the investment in bridges that we have at the same time," explains Foster, who has organized the state's bridge repair list since 2002. Low-use bridges have to wait years for attention, and some, Foster admits, the state probably won't ever fix.
"That's how they end up being closed," he says. "That's what happened with the Walker's Shop."

And because of the sheer volume of problem bridges in Maine, Foster says a municipal official can't get a bridge moved higher up the list unless a community can prove that what the MDOT thought was an underutilized bridge is in fact an important economic connector.

In Kittery, the recent closing of the Sarah Mildred Long Bridge, which connects Maine and New Hampshire along Route One, meant a "dramatic drop-off" in customers for the 22 businesses along the Maine side of the highway, according to Greater York Regional Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Catherine Goodwin. Goodwin says some of those Kittery businesses contacted her for help. She responded by launching ads in local newspapers urging readers "Don't Forget the Bypass Businesses" and by contacting the MDOT, which she says met with her promptly. The chamber was organizing a $1,000 raffle to attract customers off the detour when the MDOT repaired the snapped wire that closed the bridge ahead of schedule. The Sarah Long, Goodwin says, is due for more major repairs and Goodwin worries that those bypass businesses will again struggle.

Despite the 288 bridges around the state at risk of being posted for weight or closed, only one bridge was closed in 2006. It was the Walker's Shop Bridge in Bridgton.

Sharing the cost
The Walker's Shop Bridge is the state's responsibility until 2008. Despite Bridgton's financial responsibility should it choose to upgrade the bridge next year to pass state inspection, the MDOT agreed to strip the decking so the town's engineer can estimate repair costs.

Berkowitz expects the MDOT to strip the bridge, at a cost to the state of around $100,000, sometime in 2008. If the town discovers that the bridge's metal beams are strong and rest on solid abutments, Berkowitz calculates building a new deck would cost the town up to $250,000. If the stone abutments are weak, the town will have to invest three times as much to replace the bridge, according to Berkowitz's estimates.

Berkowitz's next step is to convince the town's selectmen to hire an engineer to study the stripped bridge, at a cost of about $5,000-$15,000. To pay for any major work on the bridge, Berkowitz says the town may earmark a portion of property tax payments from downtown businesses.

The whole experience, as well as similar bridge stories Berkowitz says he hears from town managers in the area, has convinced him that Maine municipalities will have to get used to bearing the financial burden of repairing their bridges. "The reality is there's limited dollars for the amount of repairs the state needs," he says.

Berkowitz says the MDOT appeared to respond quicker when he suggested the town might shoulder some of the repair costs. "If you bring some money to the table, now they're interested in doing more work," he explains.

Tom Watkins doesn't know when, or if, the Walker's Shop Bridge will open. But he does know if it stays closed, it will probably make going to the movies a little tougher.
Watkins is manager of the Magic Lantern Movie Theater, a four-screen cinema and event space that military supply company Down East Inc. is constructing on a piece of its property along Depot Street. He has been working with the town and neighborhood to obtain permits for the project for the past three years, and broke ground on the new building earlier this year. Watkins and Frank Howell, the owner of Down East Inc., planned the theater using Depot as the access road for the hundreds of daily customers Watkins hopes will enter and exit his parking lot. But now, especially since Berkowitz anticipates the detour route past the elementary school will soon be restricted during school hours, traffic will probably try to enter and exit the theater's lot on the same end of Depot Street.

"There's no [alternate] way to get out so this is going to really become congested," says Watkins. "I question why ˆ— with a bridge that has been in service for so long ˆ— all of sudden it's 'Oh my gosh, we can't have anyone drive over it.' Was the inspection process not maintained, or was it an overreaction?"

MDOT's Foster has difficulty explaining the web of financial pressures, infrastructure needs and economic development influences that help him decide which bridges to prioritize. After one such frustrating conversation, Foster pinpoints his process in an email. "The key trade-off in project level analysis can be described as a matter of timing," Foster explained. "Each bridge is certain to need preservation, improvement or replacement work at some point in the future, so the main question is 'when?'"

Whatever the reason for the backlog, the end result ˆ— like the red and white "road closed" sign in front of the Walker's Shop Bridge ˆ— is a state transportation system filled with roadblocks that won't disappear anytime soon.