The rehabilitation of the Hurricane Bridge under the state’s bridge bonding program is due for construction bid letting October 1st according to the Tennessee Department of Transportation.
State Senator Mae Beavers says she and Paul Degges, Chief Engineer for TDOT recently spoke about the project. “I talked to him to see what the status was of the Hurricane bridge. It is in this year’s budget. Of course, it takes time to bid it out and they’ve been working on that since the first of September. The bids are due in September 17th. After that, he said it’s routine that they check out all the bids to make sure they’re all legitimate. That takes a little bit of time and then they’ll decide what the best bid is. He said there should be a bid letting by October 1st. Then they’ll be free to start construction.”
Jennifer Flynn, Community Relations Officer in the Chattanooga TDOT Office says the project will entail a rehabilitation of the existing bridge. ” The rehabilitation project will replace the deck at the bridge. New guardrails will be installed and it will strengthen the steel structure underneath and make the bridge a lot safer and it won’t have to be weight posted anymore upon completion of the project. The estimate (to do the work) is $12 to $15 million right now but we won’t really know until the bids are opened on the project and let to contract.
The rehabilitation of Hurricane Bridge is among the projects to be funded through TDOT’s Better Bridge bonding program in the fiscal year 2010-11 state budget, which was approved by the legislature this year
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