GRAND RAPIDS TOWNSHIP, Mich. — The Crahen Avenue bridge closure that has frustrated drivers and parents since June is expected to end by mid-September, according to the Kent County Road Commission.
Erik Easterly, director of engineering at the Kent County Road Commission, said the project remains on schedule despite social media complaints about delays.
"This project has quite a few complications, and they have navigated those complications really, really quite well. And as of right now, our contract, as was set up 90 calendar days to complete, we're right on schedule," Easterly said.
The 50-year-old bridge connects two Forest Hills school districts along a busy route. Easterly said the structure "was showing some signs of distress" and prompted the replacement project.
"30 to 40 more years, and we won't have to be here again, so at least not for this long," Easterly stated, regarding the completion of the project.
Easterly acknowledged that confusion about timing arose from initial project messaging. "At the time of the initial messaging when the project started, we pushed the start date back and failed to push the end date back with it," he said.
Adding that the project had originally been pushed back to June of this year because of unique safety protocols that needed to be in place before the start of the project. Easterly emphasized how county officials had conversations with the township, schools, and emergency responders in the area during the planning process.
The closure has particularly affected parents who use the road to take their children to school but every person is affected in a different way. Forest Hills resident Kim Engle said her 83-year-old mother previously used Crahen Avenue as a back road to visit her granddaughter weekly.
"With a bridge closure, that would require her to get on the belt line, crossing three lanes of traffic and doing one of those Michigan turnarounds to do that," Engle said.
Engle hoped construction crews would've worked additional hours to complete the project sooner. "I really hope that they would be all hands on deck doing more nights and weekends, possibly to get this done sooner," she said.
Easterly said the project should wrap up in approximately three weeks. "So right now we're looking at roughly mid-September. We're about three weeks away from completion, barricades out of here, and traffic riding over the bridge again."
For now, Easterly suggests that drivers leave a little bit earlier to get to their destination.
The Kent County Road Commission provides more accurate project updates on kentcountyroads.net, where drivers can even sign up for text updates.
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