Bristol Township is continuing to explore any and all options and funding to get the Randall Avenue bridge reopened, officials said earlier this month.
Township Manager Randee Elton said the township has applied for a new multimodal grant from the state economic development funds. She said the municipality will apply for another grant at the end of this month.
We keep trying for grants for either the demolition or rebuild of the bridge, she said.
Last month officials learned no inspection date could be set and might take at least two to three more before the required review occurs after learning grants in the millions to deal with the crumbling span that runs on Amtrak’s busy Northeast Corridor would not be coming.
Elton said the Amtrak approved inspection of the aging and closed bridge is what’s needed before moving forward.
Now, she said, as an additional option, the township is looking into the option of getting a contractor to take down the damaged concrete on the bridge, which would give it time to receive other grant funds money to take down the remaining structure.
The 169-foot span bridge in the Edgely section of the township has been closed since February after chunks of the bridge fell onto the ground and onto the Amtrak and SEPTA rail lines below.
The township is set to put $975,000 worth of repair work into the bridge through a PennDOT grant before it was closed.
That project seeks to support bridge abutments by applying a resin to encase the concrete and reinforce it, officials said earlier this year.
“The average daily traffic over the bridge is approximately 400 cars per day with a cost to replace the bridge upwards of $25 million dollars. With so many higher traffic volume bridges with structural deficiencies in this region, we presume that the low volume of traffic does not make this bridge have a high scoring grant application” officials said after closing the bridge.
Sitting over the Edgely section of the township the 169- foot span bridge was constructed in 1919 and is listed in being in “poor condition” by PennDOT .
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