A City of Minneapolis plan to remove the 1925-vintage St. Anthony Parkway bridge over the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railroad yard, and replace it with a new bridge, has run into a historic-preservation snag with the federal government, which is set to provide about a third of the funding for the project.
Federal officials say they’re not convinced that the city explored every available avenue to repair and preserve the existing bridge before deciding to replace it.
City, state and federal officials will likely spend this construction season, which was the scheduled time to start the new bridge, conducting another review of the repair and replace options. City Engineer Steven Kotke said city officials have agreed to the extra review, and are “hoping the review can be completed this year so we can go out for bids next year, for whatever the next step may be.”
A citizens advisory committee worked with city officials and a consulting firm to examine the options. While there was support for fixing the existing bridge, the group determined that while the initial investments would be comparable-fixing it would cost a little more than replacing it-the repairs would likely last only about half as long as a new bridge would last.
Historians have said the bridge is significant because of its design. It uses a Warren truss design, which, according to historical accounts, was patented in 1848 by its designers, James Warren and Willoughby Theobald Monzani. It uses angled cross-members in the shape of equilateral triangles to spread the load as vehicles cross the bridge. According to a 2000 city report, only two other Warren truss bridges are in service in Minnesota, both built before 1913.
City and state officials submitted a draft project memorandum to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) in October, 2009, and the project hit a snag by the day after Thanksgiving (Nov. 27). Derrell Turner, FHWA’s district administrator for Minnesota, wrote to the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) that the project’s “purpose and need statement is not well supported and appears to lean toward a desired or preferred outcome…. The bridge appears to be functioning reasonably well as it is carrying most if not all car, truck, pedestrian and bicycle traffic that needs to utilize the bridge. Additionally, there is no history of safety issues with this bridge that have not already been corrected, such as insufficient vertical clearance.”
Historians have said the bridge is significant because of its design. It uses a Warren truss design, which, according to historical accounts, was patented in 1848 by its designers, James Warren and Willoughby Theobald Monzani. It uses angled cross-members in the shape of equilateral triangles to spread the load as vehicles cross the bridge. According to a 2000 city report, only two other Warren truss bridges are in service in Minnesota, both built before 1913.
City and state officials submitted a draft project memorandum to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) in October, 2009, and the project hit a snag by the day after Thanksgiving (Nov. 27). Derrell Turner, FHWA’s district administrator for Minnesota, wrote to the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) that the project’s “purpose and need statement is not well supported and appears to lean toward a desired or preferred outcome…. The bridge appears to be functioning reasonably well as it is carrying most if not all car, truck, pedestrian and bicycle traffic that needs to utilize the bridge. Additionally, there is no history of safety issues with this bridge that have not already been corrected, such as insufficient vertical clearance.”
Turner also wrote that the city seeks a bridge that “meets the highest standards. This does not allow the rehabilitation alternative to be given serious consideration…we strongly encourage the development of historic bridge projects in a context-sensitive manner, including the use of design exemptions and variances when practical.”
Kotke replied on March 1, 2010, noting that “We have invested a sizable amount of effort and expense over the past 15 years to determine the best strategy to improve the bridge…. To date, we have spent the majority of our efforts in determining the proper means to rehabilitate the bridge as opposed to reconstruction of the bridge…. I believe you have mischaracterized our findings and recommendations…”
“The bridge is on the City truck route system and is currently load restricted. Our analysis indicates a rehabilitated bridge would continue to be load restricted. The bridge has motor vertical clearance restrictions and does not meet current…clearance requirements for BNSF’s Northtown Yard operations below.
“The project memorandum includes a rehabilitation alternative which was developed in conjunction with FHWA and MnDOT…input over the past 18 months,” Kotke wrote, and they determined that a rehabilitation alternative cannot provide structural redundancy, elimination of height and load restrictions for trucks, extended service life with manageable maintenance costs or a reasonable benefit-cost ratio.
On Feb. 22 of this year, David Scott, FHWA’s Minnesota Division assistant division administrator, replied, “We feel that a more in-depth review of the rehabilitation option is required. Specifically, we need to know if the bridge can or should be rehabilitated to the full legal load limit or if it could function at some reduced capacity. It also needs to be determined what the impacts would be to the historic appearance of the structure if it were rehabilitated. We feel that the review should be undertaken by a firm that has not been previously associated with this project and that has experience with the rehabilitation of historic truss bridges.”
“Please understand that we cannot move forward…until we have fully addressed the issues associated with the impacts a project would have on this historic structure,” Scott wrote.
Kotke said last week that city officials agreed to the additional review.
The bridge replacement alternative has a cost of about $28 million, Kotke said, with almost $9 million coming from the federal government, $12.7 million coming from state sources, $5.4 million coming from city sources, mostly net debt bonds, and about $1 million requested (not yet confirmed) from BNSF.
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