» Monument Avenue Bridge:
New $170,000 lights replaced defective system on Monument Avenue bridge.
New LED lights have been installed to replace a defective system, adding $170,000 to the bridge’s cost,
The Monument Avenue Bridge — brightly lit during the Christmas holiday for the first time — hasn’t been so bright for the four years after construction was completed because, until now, the lights haven’t worked.
New LED lights had to be installed to replace a defective system, adding $170,000 to the bridge’s cost. But it’s an amount that officials say is well worth paying given the status of the bridge over the Great Miami River as a gateway to the city visible from Interstate 75 and near the Dayton Art Institute and Dayton Masonic Center.
The system received a final inspection Monday, and it appears to be working fine.
The $9.6 million replacement bridge project finished in 2009. Hundreds of thousands went to pay for ornamental fiber optic lighting, but the lights never quite worked, said the Ohio Department of Transportation.
ODOT spent years trying to figure out the cause of the problems and considered a variety of issues including temperature swings, said Dave Ley, ODOT District 7 construction administrator. Rather than trying to recover the cost of the system through litigation with the contractors, ODOT decided to upgrade it with newer LED light technology while using parts of the old system.
“We were never able to pinpoint the exact problem,” Ley said. “It would work but it would go out. We couldn’t get the fiber to work consistently.”
With the increased cost to fix the system, the price tag for the bridge lighting came to $500,000. The system consists of 24flood lights tucked under the bridge behind piers for a defused lighting effect and 40 spot lights on the bridge sides and on the outward facing sides of the piers. Seventeen-hundred feet of conduit hold multiple cables and wires to power the system.
Bridge lighting is becoming a Dayton trademark — impressing hometowners, visitors and especially sports fans. The newer LED lights can be programmed for certain colors like a team’s hues or set to change at intervals to all the colors of the rainbow, said Steve Finke, engineer for the city of Dayton. Besides the Monument Avenue Bridge, the lights can be found on the Fifth Street Bridge, the Edwin C. Moses Bridge and the Stewart Street Bridge.
“It sends a nice advertisement for the city of Dayton for people passing through,” Ley said. “When you can help people remember your city, that’s great.”
Finke said he’s also pleased the problems are fixed. The city often gets requests from organizations like the American Heart Association to light it with particular colors for special occasions.
“We get a lot of requests from groups. We were looking forward to it working,” Finke said.