Published: August 15, 2008 07:31 am      

Work on two bridges snarls daytime traffic

ASHLAND — Business owners and commuters are seeing red — or make that orange, as in construction barrels — over what they consider a major coordination gaffe between officials in Kentucky and Ohio.

Traffic between the two states has been snarled this week by work taking place simultaneously on two Ohio River bridges.

The Kentucky Department of Highways reduced traffic on the Ben Williamson Memorial Bridge, which carries traffic from U.S. 52 in Ohio to Winchester Avenue in Ashland, to one lane this past weekend so that contractors could waterproof the span.

That project coincided with the first week of daytime closures of the Ironton-Russell Bridge. The Russell span will be shut down between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. for the next two months while workers repair the bridge’s deck, grid panels, fatigue areas, lighting and guardrail.

And, further adding to the headaches of motorists is the fact that road construction has reduced traffic to one lane on U.S. 52 between Coal Grove and Ironton.

“It’s just a big mess,” said Laura McDonald, who lives in Ironton and works at the Smart Styles hair salon in the Ashland Wal-Mart. “Traffic’s congested, people won’t let you through. You’ll sit on the bridge for 10 or 15 minutes sometimes in the mornings.”

McDonald said the traffic situation was already bad due to the U.S. 52 construction, and “when they did that to the bridge, it made it 100 times worse.”

She said she couldn’t understand why the work on the Williamson Bridge couldn’t have been scheduled to take place prior to the period when the Ironton-Russell Bridge would be closed during the day.

Rick Brislin, owner of First Stop Liquors, which is located on Winchester Avenue at the foot of the Williamson Bridge, wondered the same thing.

“It (the bridge work) has definitely created some problems for our regular customers from Ohio,” he said. “The sad thing is, this didn’t have to happen. You would think they would have done the work (on the Williamson Bridge) the week before the Russell Bridge went down or at night.

“Nobody seems to be talking to each other,” Brislin said.

Brislin said he had originally hoped that business might be up a little this week due to the closure of the Russell Bridge. But, he said any gains from that had been more than offset by the work on the Williamson Bridge.

“It’s definitely had an impact,” he said. “We’ve also heard a lot of gripes and complaints from our customers.”

Shirley Massie, owner of Ashland News, 1327 Winchester Ave., estimated that her business was off by about 30 percent this week because of the bridge situation.

“Believe it or not, the only times I get any business are at 3:30 in the morning, when I open up, then again about 6, when everyone’s going to work,” she said. “After that, it’s just awful.”

Massie said the loss in business had mostly been due to Ohio commuters skipping their normal stops at her place due to the traffic tie-ups.

“I never realized so many Ironton people work in Ashland,” she said.

Although it’s likely to be cold comfort to folks stuck in rush-hour traffic jams or businesses whose bottom lines are hurting, transportation officials in Kentucky did, indeed, attempt to coordinate the scheduling of the Williamson Bridge project so that it wouldn’t occur at the same time the Russell Bridge would be closed, said Allen Blair, a spokesman for the Kentucky Department of Highways’ District 9 office in Flemingsburg.

“We always try to schedule things at different times if possible,” he said. “But, sometimes there are going to be conflicts.”

When that happens, Blair said, the Department of Highways tries to work with contractors to get the projects done as quickly as possible, as it did with the Williamson Bridge project. Employees of Delong Concrete LLC have been working “practically around the clock” to expedite the job and are on track to have it finished by this weekend, he said.

Under normal circumstances, the waterproofing project would have taken at least two weeks, if not longer, to complete, Blair said.

“It’s an important project,” he said. “It’s literally going to extend the life of the bridge.”