Cost of repairing old bridge just went up

Village Council hopes to stay within budgeted figure of $250,000.

A fix to

NORTH PALM BEACH — squeeze a few more years out of a 60-year-old bridge is going to cost North Palm Beach more than village officials had hoped but no more than the $250,000 they budgeted.

The Village Council unanimously agreed to pay for additional repairs to the Lighthouse Bridge seawall, up to $250,000, at its June 28 meeting.

Lighthouse Drive runs east to west, and the bridge is just east of Prosperity Farms Road. It is not the bridge that partly col

lapsed in October. That bridge is on U.S. 1 north of Northlake Boulevard.

The Lighthouse Drive bridge was built in the 1950s, and the village’s public works director previously advised the council they should seriously consider replacing it within five to eight years. The council initially hired Proshot Concrete to repair the bridge for $146,600.

But crews found the concrete

and rebar on the seawall caps were more degraded than they thought, Village Manager Andy Lukasik said. That meant that they needed more concrete and rebar than they estimated.

“As we were pulling the concrete back, we were finding more and more degradation, so we had to expand the scope on the east side of the bridge, and we’re finding similar conditions on the west side,” Lukasik said.

The council’s approval of the additional expense was somewhat perfunc- tory, because the village staff had to authorize the repairs while the contractor was already at the site to save money, Lukasik said. Repairs money is coming from the county-wide penny sales tax increase that voters approved in November 2016.

“Even though there’s a very significant increase in the amount of the contract, the $250,000 we’re increas- ing the contract amount to is still within the budget that we originally had allocated,” Lukasik told the council.

The repairs may grant vil- lage officials another five to eight years before they will have to replace the bridge.

Inspectors who examined the bridge in May gave it a “sufficiency rating” of 27.2 percent. The rating is used to determine whether a bridge should be repaired or replaced. Only about half of the factors relate to the con- dition of the bridge, according to the Florida Department of Transportation.

Entities that own bridges with ratings below 50 per- cent can qualify for federal money to replace them.

PHOTO COURTESY OF NORTH PALM BEACH Crews repair the Lighthouse Drive bridge in North Palm Beach, where the concrete and rebar were were in worse shape than the contractor originally thought.

PHOTO COURTESY OF NORTH PALM BEACH Money to repair the Lighthouse Drive bridge is coming from the county-wide penny sales tax increase approved by voters in 2016.

ANDRES LEIVA / THE PALM BEACH POST Fixing the Lighthouse Drive bridge may give five to eight years of further use before the span must be replaced.