Span may be ready in six weeks
Meadow Street Bridge in Rocky Top closed last May
The new Meadow Street Bridge in Rocky Top is ready for its concrete deck to be poured, and should be opened to traffic in about six weeks, city officials said. The old bridge was removed last May. (photo:G Chambers Williams III )
Rocky Top City Manager Michael Foster said Monday that the so-called Meadow Street Bridge, which actually carries Leach Avenue over a tributary of Coal Creek near downtown, is ready for its deck.
The previous bridge was removed last May, and residents who use it were initially told it would take only about three months to get the new one built and opened.
“They are ready for the deck now,” Foster said. “It will take about a week to form and pour the top, but then it has to cure for 14 days before traffic can be allowed to use it.
“The new bridge is a lot bigger than what was there, and it has a sidewalk on it,” he said.
Most of the delay came because the city had to move a waterline that was unexpectedly found when the old bridge was demolished.
When the contractor, Twin K Construction Co. of Scott County, tore out the old bridge and began boring to put in concrete supports for the new one, crews found a four-inch waterline that was not on the city’s maps – and it was in the way.
“We have a waterline that runs right where they’re doing the work,” Foster said last year. “They demolished the old bridge, then ran into that line we didn’t know was there. We finally found it on an old map from the 1970s.”
Work was then stopped until the city could determine where the line ran and what customers were served by it, and how to move it to allow bridge construction to proceed.
“It took us a while to get somebody to look at it, and get some prices on boring it through the creek,” Foster said. “Then COVID hit some of our guys.”
City crews replaced the line in late November, after waiting for water pipe and other supplies that were on backorder.
The bridge project itself, with a final bid price of $263.667, is being paid for by the state under former Gov. Bill Haslem’s Improve Act, which raised the state gasoline tax to pay for bridge and road projects statewide, Foster said.
