Trenton Street bridge
Leader file photo
The incident over the weekend of a chunk of concrete falling off the Trenton Street bridge isn’t new in Ruston. This hole created on the Cooktown Road bridge in 2016 shows a car passing on Interstate 20 below.
Mayor Ronny Walker said Tuesday he plans to talk with the state Department of Transportation and Development district officials to “see what they’d like for us to do” to get talks started about replacing the aging US 167 Trenton Street bridge.
“This has gone on long enough,” he said.
The left lane of the overpass that spans I-20 was closed for more than 12 hours from Saturday night to Sunday after chunks of concrete fell onto the interstate below. No one was injured in incident.
The bridge was built in 1959. It isn’t on the replacement list.
DOTD repairs crews patched the approximately 4- foot- long by 2- foot- wide hole and reopened the bridge late Sunday afternoon.
“Bridge decks do wear out over time,” DOTD area Public Information Officer Erin Buchanan said. “Most importantly, the bridge is safe for travel — it would be immediately closed if our bridge engineer and inspectors deemed the condition of the bridge to be unsafe.”
“This particular bridge is not currently on the schedule for replacement, but that does not mean a project can’t or won’t be developed for it,” she said.
Walker said the bridge, which is the primary artery from north Ruston to downtown and southward, is one of the most heavily traveled in the area, yet over the last several years, DOTD has replaced bridges in Simsboro, Minden, and Calhoun with lower daily traffic counts.
Yet the Trenton Street bridge “ is not even on the radar,” Walker said.
Officials aren’t sure when the hole opened. It was spotted sometime Friday by a UPS delivery driver, but not reported to the city until the next day when the driver reportedly went back over the bridge and saw the hole still there.
The hole was about in the middle of the bridge near the inside of the left lane. A fragment of the loose concrete hit just outside the right eastbound travel lane below.
In 2016, a similar incident happened on the La. 544 Cooktown Road bridge, forcing closure of that bridge for several days. Traffic on the interstate below was visible through the hole.
That overpass, built in 1961, was originally scheduled for replacement in 2022 and is now tentatively set to go to bid for replacement in 2024, Buchanan said.
