Morgan County Highway Department will be busy in the design phase for 3 bridges in the near future.
Morgan County Highway Engineer Matt Coultas says the first bridge on priority with the help from the Illinois Department of Transportation is in Road District #10 and is needing upgraded to handle heavy truck traffic: “The bridge is located on Worral Cutoff Road. It used to be a county highway – Lynnville-Woodson Road – but when US 67 went through that area it was moved to the road district and transferred to their responsibility. The project is requiring posting now after we received information from the Bridge Office at IDOT that it requires 20-ton load posting. I’m really surprised it took this long for this particular bridge to need posting.”
The second bridge is also on the Lynnville-Woodson Road in the same road district. Coultas has placed the second highest priority on the bridge for the county highway department to get it fixed: “This project is actually on county highway. It’s probably the #2 bridge in line to be replaced in our county highway system. This will be a locally-funded project. The #1 right now is the Poor Farm Road – the long, 5-span bridge – that we are annually submitting requests for major bridge funds with the state. This particular project on Lynnville-Woodson Road will be funded locally.”
The final bridge is located in Road District #1 located along Wheeler Road. The bridge is near the road district’s operations shed. Coultas says one bridge is already in the design phase north of the shed. He says this bridge will be south of the shed. Coultas says the weight-baring of the structure will change to handle heavier equipment: “Right now, the only access to those areas would be Ring Road, which is not a very heavily traveled route. We recently had this structure posted. It came out about the same time as the previously discussed structure in Road District #10. This one is now posted at 12 tons, so at either end of this road it’s kind of shut off from the world that has any kind of weight to it.”
Coultas says these items will all be placed in the design phase and then be placed for bid upon completion. Coultas could not provide a cost estimate to get the projects completed.