CH2M talks Chester Bridge study

The environmental study on the Chester Bridge is in its early stages, but CH2M engineers Buddy Desai, James Ritter and Timothy Nittler sat down with local media on June 7 for a question-and-answer session about the process.

According to Desai, who is the consultant project manager on the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) study, the bridge has been assessed by the Missouri Department of Transportation as functionally obsolete and in poor structural condition.

"That doesn't mean it's unsafe," said Nittler, the project's senior engineer.

Rittler is the study's lead engineer.

"He's the one who leads up the design team," Desai said of Ritter. "Tim will provide the senior oversight as we move through things."

Additional CH2M engineers conducted traffic counts on June 6 and 7, first on the Missouri side on June 6 and then the Illinois side the next day.

The first two intersections after the bridge on both sides of the Mississippi River were evaluated during the morning (6:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.) and evening (3 p.m. to 5 p.m.) rush hours, with the Bridge Bypass Road turnoff and Taylor Street being the chosen intersections on the Chester side.

"Part of our analysis is to develop and vision how well the future improvement's going to function," Nittler said. "If we know the existing traffic that's using the facility, the existing number of vehicles a day that are on the facility, we can project out into the future using a growth factor."

Nittler noted that the growth factor is typically extended out to 40 years, even though a new bridge or roadway would usually last longer than that.

"The bridge will last many years beyond 40, but traditionally, we'll design 40 years out," Desai said. "So we want to design whatever roadway or bridge or intersection or interchange or whatever we may be looking at into a 40-year horizon with projected traffic."

Desai noted that one question CH2M gets right away is how many lanes the bridge will have.

"If you build a new bridge, how many lanes?" he said. "We don't know yet. We know there's a little over 6,000 vehicles that use (the Chester Bridge) based on (Missouri Department of Transportation)'s counts that use the bridge on a daily basis."

Desai was asked if a pedestrian lane may be included with a potential new bridge, given how the Chester Bridge is a favorite spot of crossing for people or organizations on charitable causes.

"I think if there's a new bridge, there would certainly be shoulders on there," Desai said. "Which should help at least the bicyclists.

"I know one of our counters (on June 6) said she saw somebody riding a bicycle across the bridge and was able to get a picture of it, which is always good because we address that."

Desai noted that more than 400 online bridge surveys (accessible at www.chesterbridgestudy.com) have been filled out, with a deadline of June 16.

"What we've seen in the surveys is all very consistent," Desai said. "What we heard is it is too narrow, there's no place to pull off in case there's an accident or if you have a breakdown, and there were concerns about the condition of the bridge."

Concerns regarding flooding closures and multiple daily closures for oversized vehicles have also been expressed.

Ritter noted he had spoken with a police officer earlier in the day who stated the bridge has to be closed 12 to 20 times per day for oversized traffic.

"While there is a concern with the delay, it's also the cost of the police department to have to keep bringing somebody out here up to 20 times per day," Desai said

Information from the surveys is used to create a purpose and need for the study.

"Once purpose and need is approved, then we start developing alternatives," Desai said. "While we're gathering all this data, we're developing a GIS database of all of the roadway features, environmental features, whatever data that we have."

Desai noted that one of the requirements of a NEPA study is to evaluate the option of doing nothing (leaving the bridge as-is), with the other options of rehabbing the existing bridge or replacing it.

He cautioned that while it's not a given that there will be a new bridge, that possibility would be considered during the study along with the other options.

"The main purpose is having a safe and reliable crossing of the Mississippi River," Desai said. "If I had to boil it down into a nutshell in one sentence, that's it."

Once those alternatives have been considered, CH2M will then look at alternatives both upstream and downstream of the current bridge.

"We really try to limit how far upstream or downstream the project needs to go," Desai said. "Because it obviously serves Chester."

Ultimately, the NEPA study will determine a preferred alternative - which will be the one MoDOT will move forward with - for the bridge and is based on project cost, environment impact and other factors.

"MoDOT does not have the construction money for this project yet," Desai said. "Doing this study sets them up so that should federal money become available, they can make use of it.

"If there was money available today for the Chester Bridge project, they couldn't use it until this study's done."

Desai noted his team does have some potential challenges with the study, such as the habitat of the endangered Indiana and Northern long-eared bats (which are known to nest in caves or under bridges) and what Desai stated as "Section 4F" of Federal Highway Administration regulations.

"Section 4F includes protections for parks, historic landmarks and buildings over a certain age," he said. "These are properties that are on or eligible for the National Register of Historic Places."

Desai noted that the Chester Bridge is eligible for the NRHP.

"That doesn't mean we can't impact them, but if we are going to impact them then there's another rigorous analysis that we need to perform that says there aren't any prudent or feasible alternatives to impact," he said.

Another potential issue is how, or if, the Chester Welcome Center is affected.

"I'm sure that we'll have an alternative on the downstream side and then (the Welcome Center) becomes an issue," Desai said. "If you play it out in your head and start thinking about it, we would have to make sure there aren't any prudent or feasible alternatives to impacting it."

Desai noted that CH2M is in the process of putting together a community advisor group - which would consist of 20 people who have a stake in the process - that would meet four times during the process starting later this summer.

Potential members of the group could be Gilster-Mary Lee and TG Missouri representatives, as well as emergency responders.

"We try to pick people who represent not just one viewpoint," Desai said. "Because they'll skew the direction of where things go.

"It's a little bit simpler on this project because it's a bridge, but when we're dealing with roads, if you get a whole bunch of landowners, they're going to skew it away from their house."

Desai noted that since the Illinois Department of Transportation only meets in June, September and February to discuss decision points on large projects, CH2M would hope to present its conceptual alternatives to the public after IDOT's September meeting.

Reasonable alternatives would be presented after the February meeting and the final preferred alternative would be announced sometime in summer 2018. The total process could take 24 to 30 months to complete

"It will be seeking validation because the document won't be submitted until after that preferred alternative public meeting," Desai said. "So that we can say in the document 'hey, we took it to the public and they agreed' or 'here's what the results were out of the three reasonable alternatives.'

"We'll try to develop a survey that teases out why you like a preferred alternative."