PORT CARBON - Motorists who drive through Port Carbon will have to become familiar with a detour around the Pottsville Street Bridge, which will close for its replacement.
"The closure is expected to occur sometime the morning of Tuesday, April 22," Ronald J. Young Jr., press officer for state Department of Transportation District 5, Allentown, said Wednesday.
In preparation, PennDOT workers widened and patched part of the detour route, local officials made efforts to keep the community safe during the proposed seven-month project and area emergency management and hospital officials are also getting the word out about the detour.
"We were assured that the ambulances would be able to get here. And I really don't see any problems. We're just hoping our patients and our visitors keep an eye out and be aware," John Brobst, emergency management coordinator for Schuylkill Health, said Thursday.
"Everything's looking good. I just ask that borough residents be patient with the construction, which will last all summer. I believe it's going to be a good change in the long run," borough Mayor Charles R. "Chuck" Joy said Friday.
PennDOT expects the new Pottsville Street Bridge to be open to traffic by Oct. 17, Bharat A. Pandya, a PennDOT construction engineer, said February at a pre-construction meeting in Allentown.
Built in 1926, the Pottsville Street Bridge is a concrete T-beam bridge. It needs to be replaced because of deficiencies in its superstructure, Sean A. Brown, safety press officer for PennDOT, said previously.
It will be replaced by a reinforced concrete adjacent box-beam bridge, which can hold "unlimited" tonnage, Timothy A. Bolden, a consulting engineer with Gibson-Thomas Engineering Co. Inc., Camp Hill, the firm the state hired to design the new bridge, said previously.
In February, PennDOT hired Heim Construction of Pottsville as the general contractor for the bridge replacement project with an estimated cost of $1,797,789.37.
In early April, PennDOT placed bright orange signs at the bridge, emblazoned with the message: "This bridge to be closed for construction April 21, 2014." In the past week, the date on the signs was changed to "April 22, 2014."
"During construction, traffic will be detoured on Commerce, Jackson, Coal and Market streets. The contractor is currently widening Commerce Street by approximately four feet between Jackson and Pottsville streets to provide enough space for two lanes of traffic, one in each direction," Young said Thursday.
To discourage tractor-trailers and dump trucks from straying off the detour and onto the borough-owned Washington Street Bridge, the borough council approved a resolution April 1.
"And we do have our officers doing what they can while they're out patrolling," Joy said.
Last week, PennDOT set up a temporary traffic signal at the intersection of Jackson and Coal streets.
"It should be fully activated April 22," Young said.
This is one of three state bridge-replacement projects that will occur simultaneously in the area over the next half year.
PennDOT is also working to replace two neighboring bridges on Route 61, one in Pottsville and the other just over the city line in Palo Alto.
These bridges, dubbed the "Mady's" bridges, are roughly 2 miles from the Pottsville Street Bridge in Port Carbon.
The Mady's bridges were deemed structurally deficit in 2001 due to abutment issues. The $10,568,416 project awarded to Glenn O. Hawbaker Inc., State College, is slated for completion in August 2017.
Located in Palo Alto, "Mady's Big Bridge" is a 314-foot-long and 64-foot-wide four-span concrete encased steel I-beam bridge over the Reading, Blue Mountain & Northern Railroad.
It will be replaced with a two-span concrete bulb-tee beam bridge that measures 63 feet 10 inches wide.
"Mady's Small Bridge" in Pottsville over the Schuylkill River is 79 feet long and 62 feet wide. It is a single span steel I-beam bridge. The replacement will be 100 feet long and 62 feet 6 inches wide.
All three of these projects are within a mile of Schuylkill Health's two hospitals.
Brobst said he and the staff at Schuylkill Health don't think they will disrupt traffic to the hospitals or interrupt ambulance response time.
To get an idea of how many ambulances visit each of those facilities in a year, hospital spokesman M. Michael Peckman checked statistics.
In 2013, 4,604 ambulances visited Schuylkill Medical Center-East Norwegian Street, and 4,444 ambulances visited Schuylkill Medical Center-South Jackson Street, Peckman said Thursday.