The bridge project is expected to inconvenience East B Hill Road drivers for up to eight days.
UPTON – Bidding is under way for the Maine Department of Transportation’s summer project to replace the Andover dam bridge.
Project manager Wayne Frankhauser said bids would be opened Wednesday, Feb. 4, and the project awarded to the low bidder.
The bridge carries East B Hill Road over the Cambridge River a little over a mile east of Route 26 near the Maine-New Hampshire border.
Frankhauser said Tuesday that the structurally-deficient, 50-foot-long bridge, which was built in 1936, is way past due to be replaced.
“It’s a true local bridge that has been helped along by extensive patching,” he said.
The latest major patch job, in 1997, reduced the bridge roadway to approximately 14 feet and one travel lane.
“This repair was done due to the poor condition of the existing pony truss superstructure,” Frankhauser said.
The bridge was reinforced by placement of two steel girders along the inside of the truss. The repair work sufficiently strengthened the bridge, allowing for a weight posting to be lifted.
The bridge project is expected to inconvenience East B Hill Road drivers for up to eight days. The road will be closed to traffic for two 4-day closures.
That means instead of driving the roughly 12 miles from Upton to Andover by way of the road, drivers would be forced to detour about 36 miles from Upton to Andover via Newry, Hanover and Rumford Point.
“The impact on drivers will be sharply reduced thanks to construction innovations incorporated into the project,” he said.
The road is an important link between Route 26 and Andover for forest products and recreational travel. About 100 cars use the road on an average day.
Innovations include taking advantage of construction technology advances, and incorporating financial incentives and disincentives into the contract.
“For the first time in our history, the department is going to be using a combination of pre-cast concrete abutments, a pre-cast approach slab, and pre-cast, post-tensioned structural concrete box beams,” Frankhauser said.
The department has used incentives and disincentives before, but never in combination with the heavy dependence on pre-casting most of the structure.
If the contractor has the road closed for 192 total hours or less, they will earn a $20,000 bonus for beating the deadline, plus $200 per hour for each hour they reopen the road ahead of schedule, Frankhauser said.
Conversely, if they fail to reopen the road within the 192-hour limit, they will be penalized $300 per hour for each of the first 10 hours over the limit, $400 per hour if they exceed the limit by 10 to 30 hours, and $600 per hour for every hour beyond 30 hours.
“On a project of this cost, those incentive and disincentive amounts are not unrealistic,” he added, declining to specify the cost due to the bidding process.
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