Elgin making plans to replace 2 Fox River bridges
Both Kimball Street and Chicago Street spans deteriorating
Work to replace Elgin’s deteriorating Kimball Street and Chicago Street bridges could begin as soon as 2026, with the city expected to pay about $7 million of the $37 million cost for both.
Both spans over the Fox River were found to be “functionally obsolete,” when evaluated by the Illinois Department of Transportation using the National Bridge Inspection Standards. One was listed as being “structurally deficient,” and the other has a deck that’s cited as “high priority for correction.”
The city, which does its own bridge inspections on a regular basis, found the same thing, Public Works Director Mike Pubentz said. After an inspection, a condition report is compiled and a condition index number assigned, he said.
“There’s no imminent danger,” Pubentz said. “This is just a regular part of the process we do as we see downward trends in some of the condition numbers.”
Replacement of bridges is “a long-term endeavor,” he said. “We want to get started early. Obviously, as we start to work on this, the conditions may start to decline more.”
The city will start doing Phase I design work next year, Pubentz said.
“Phase I is sometimes called preliminary engineering,” he said. “We’ll look at environmental issues, historic issues … it’s the planning portion of the process. The preliminary engineering will give city officials an idea of what type of bridge should be built, the size and the design, he said.
Final design, cost estimates and contract bidding are done in Phase II, Pubentz said. The last phase is the actual construction.
In this case, the first phases for both bridges will be done at the same time, he
said, but construction will be on different schedules, he said.
“When we replace these bridges, it will be a major traffic disruption. We’ll be closing portions of Kimball and Chicago streets,” Pubentz said. “We certainly don’t want construction of those two bridges to overlap. We’ll finish one, get it fully open for
traffic, then we’ll start working on the next one.”
Kimball Street’s reconstruction begins first, starting in 2026 and continuing through 2027, Pubentz said. The Chicago Street bridge work is to be done in 2028 and 2029.
The city is working to secure federal Surface Transportation Programs funding
that would cover 80% of the $37 million cost for both bridges. The “significant amount of federal funds will make this much easier to pull off,” Pubentz said.
Money from the recently approved Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is not going to be requested because, with planning already underway, the work
falls under the current federal funding program, he said.
“We knew we couldn’t wait to start moving forward on the replacement of these structures,” he said.
The Illinois Department of Transportation last evaluated the two bridges in July 2020, assigning a rating using the 20 criteria in National Bridge Inspection Standards, according to the IDOT website.
Kimball Street’s sufficiency rating was 27.3%, according to IDOT, making it has top priority for replacement, city officials said. The bridge, built in 1917, is considered structurally deficient and functionally obsolete, IDOT’s evaluation said.
Structurally deficient “doesn’t mean it’s on the verge of collapse,” Pubentz said. “It means certain structural elements of the bridge are deteriorating to the point they need either a higher level of maintenance
or replacement. That’s really what we’re working toward,” he said.
Functionally obsolete has to do with the bridge’s geometrics, like the slope, Pubentz said.
“The bridge doesn’t match the standards of bridge or roadway (designs) applied today. It doesn’t make it unsafe,” he said.
“We’ll continue to do inspections on the bridge, and all our bridges, and do repairs if needed or if the sufficiency rating falls below standards,” Pubentz said.
The Chicago Street bridge had a 60.8% sufficiency rating, according to IDOT, meaning it is functionally obsolete. While the structure is “better than adequate to be left in place,” the deck geometry is “intolerable-high priority for correction,” according to the inspection report.