(7/30) On any given day, the conversation in Harrington’s Lawn Equipment repair of East Main street will eventually turn to jokes about what decade the Flat Run Bridge work will finally be completed. Paul Harrington even muses about starting a betting pool to see who could come closest to the date … "whatever decade that may be."

For the past year work on the bridge has been, for all intents and purposes, at a standstill, but getting answers concerning the delay has proven harder than imagined. Questions to the town staff are answered with, "Go ask the state." Questions to the state are answered with, "Go ask the town!"

It’s been almost four years (October 2014) since plans were finalized by the State Highway Administration (SHA) to replace the bridge on Route 140 (East Main Street) over Flat Run. At that time the SHA predicted the bridge replacement would take less than nine months, with work beginning in the fall of 2015. The replacement plan also entailed shifting the bridge slightly from its present location thereby enabling a sidewalk to be added to the north side of the bridge.

In January 2015, the SHA announced that work on the bridge would be advanced three months and begin in the summer of 2015. However, summer came and went without a peep from the SHA or the town. In November 2015, the town approved its Comprehensive Plan, which included language to the effect that replacement work on the bridge would begin spring of 2016. But that date slipped quietly too, and it was not until the fall of 2016 that the SHA ‘officially’ began work on the bridge.

The "new" projected completion date for the bridge was the summer of 2018 – which obviously has come and gone – leaving many users of Rt-140 with a growing sense of frustration over the lack of transparency concerning the reasons for the delay in the bridge work and uncertainty as to when the work will be done.

The reasons for the delay are varied. The initial delay, according to the state, was a result of drainage issues, which first occurred before the project was underway, back in 2015. Drainage alongside Flat Run Bridge had to undergo a re-design phase to allow the project to proceed. However, according to the SHA these issues were minor and didn’t majorly contribute to the delay.

The SHA stated that the main problem that contributed to the delay was the discovery of a water line, adjacent to the bridge, which had not been accounted for in the planning phase. As explained by the SHA, the town owns the water line and it was initially deemed that the line was located far enough away from the project not to cause an issue when the project was slated to begin in 2015. In a typical he said/she said commentary, Town staff noted that they had warned the state from the very beginning of the project that the water line would be an issue and advised revising their site plans. According to the state, when the contractor first surveyed the project, he flagged the water line as an issue and decided that a memorandum of understanding was necessary between the town, SHA, and the contractor as to who would cover the cost of relocating the line, as that was not within the original scope of the project.

In order for the project to continue the SHA determined that the water line would need to be moved, potentially costing the town $38,000. The town, however, refused to pay, and for the next year, drivers were inconvenienced as the town and state bickered over who would pay. It wasn’t until late fall of 2017 that town staff finally notified the Board of Commissioners that the yearlong hold up was because the town refused to pay the $38,000 to relocate the water line.

In March of this year, an agreement was finally reached wherein the contractor and the SHA would be splitting the cost of replacing the line. With the town cut out, work on the water line finally began and was quickly completed by the end of April. Things were looking up until the wet weather this late spring/early summer held off pouring concrete for the bridges’ abutments halting, once again, progress on the bridge’s completion.

In regards to the cost of the project, the SHA was unwilling to estimate the final cost of the two-year delay in getting the bridgework going. Instead, it stuck by its original estimate of $4.3 million, although it was noted that the actual end cost could be much higher given all the delays thus far and the fact construction crews sat around doing nothing with the town and state bickered.

Originally slated to take only a year to complete, actual work on the bridge will supposedly begin in earnest this fall, three years behind schedule. According to Mayor Briggs, the bridge is still "on schedule" for completion "on time." The goal for the completion of this project is December 2019 and has been the goal "all along" said Briggs. The SHA, however, contradicted Briggs’ statement, stating that the original predicted completion date was the summer 2016.

According to the SHA, if no further complications come up, the bridge may be completed before the turn of the next decade, three and a half years longer than the original plan.

It’s worth noting that Flat Run Bridge being replaced was constructed in less than six months in 1912 at a cost of just under $21,000.