Work that’s reduced traffic flow to one lane across a bridge on Highway 50 should be completed soon, according to state officials.
The Mississippi Department of Transportation has been replacing expansion joints along a bridge that passes over the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, North District Commissioner Mike Tagert said.
Skip Benson, assistant construction engineer at MDOT’s Tupelo office, said the work on Highway 50’s bridge should be completed by the end of the month. He said the project cost about $1 million.
The 3,600-foot bridge straddles the border between Clay and Lowndes counties.
Tagert said the Highway 50 project is coupled with similar work that will follow on a bridge on Highway 278 in Monroe County. The two bridges are part of a larger maintenance effort MDOT has undertaken for bridges along the waterway.
“Over the last couple of years, we’ve worked to replace all the expansion joints on all the bridges along the Tenn-Tom Waterway,” Tagert said. “Both of these bridges were built in 1981, and this is for regulation and safety.”
Benson said the joints allow the bridges to move and for the concrete to expand naturally. If they’re not in proper condition, he said, it can cause problems.
“Concrete expands and contracts,” he said. “If you don’t have a metal joint letting it contract and expand, you get the concrete butting up against itself and that can damage the bridge.”
While the work has been in progress, MDOT has closed one lane of the two-lane bridge. Stop lights at either end of the bridge hold traffic while vehicles cross from the other side, which can lead to some traffic back-up. Tagert said that’s just one of the challenges in dealing with the bridges.
“The difference in the Highway 50 and 278 bridges and others is that these are two-lane bridges,” he said. “Unfortunately, we have to shut them down and have one-way traffic. Something like the Highway 82 bridge, in Columbus, which is four lanes, would give us more flexibility.”
Tagert said MDOT has already completed expansion joint replacements on Highway 82.
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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