By Jonathan Copsey / STAFF

There might actually be a silver lining to Alpharetta’s bridge problem, especially the bridge on Douglas Road over Caney Creek; there’s both good news and bad news.

The bad news is that the Douglas Road bridge recently received a poor grade from the Department of Transportation, which is in charge of grading bridges. The grade was such that vehicles over seven tons are not allowed to cross. This means that heavy traffic, such as delivery trucks and school buses, have to find alternate routes around it. The bad news is that, last week, a school bus crossed the bridge.

The good news is that the bus made it safely across the bridge, and that there might actually be a cheap way to fix this broken crossing, if it is in fact broken.

Frank Wingate, who spoke at last week’s Alpharetta Council meeting, is the principal in an engineering firm specializing in bridge work. He asserted that most bridge inspections are only visually conducted and as much as 30 percent of failed inspections are in fact perfectly fine. There’s an easy – and cheap! – way to determine the safety of the bridge. Basically, he wants to run a heavy truck over it. If it makes it safely to the other side, the bridge is fine; if the bridge shows signs of strain, something needs to be done. This could be done for a few thousand dollars, potentially saving the city most of the $1.3 million it wants to spend on replacing the crossing.

“That’s less than one percent of the money that’s being considered for the replacement of the bridge… [and] you may be able to reinforce the bridge instead of replace it,” said Wingate.

Councilman Doug DeRito, ever the fiscal watchdog, supported Wingate’s suggestions. “I still don’t remain convinced that we need to take $900-some thousand [from left-over bond funds] and encumber them this quickly into the Douglas Road Bridge,” he said. “Mr. Wingate’s comments solidify that in my mind. There are things we need to look at first before we encumber these funds. I’m very concerned about just taking that bulk of money and moving it to one type of project that came up overnight without taking the time to consider other priorities in the city.”

According to Engineering Director Pete Sewczwicz, the test would be simple to perform and there are some relatively cheap alternatives to replacing the entire bridge (such as reinforcing it with metal rods). However, he cautioned against being too caught up in the cost, since construction of the nearby roundabout and studies on the Caney Creek flood levels might require raising or replacing the bridge anyway.

In the end, council decided to table the item again, delaying any firm decision until staff can come up with costs of any tests and further analysis.