Guadalupe bridge closed until October
The bridge that carries southbound traffic from U.S. 84/285 onto North Guadalupe Street in Santa Fe will remain closed until October as construction crews continue a rehabilitation project, according to an official with the state Department of Transportation.
The one-lane bridge was shut down Aug. 7. While the Department of Transportation said Aug. 3 that the closure would last two weeks, the bridge was still closed Wednesday and was expected to remain closed for the next two months.
“It’s easier to just leave it closed,” said Jared Rodriguez, assistant manager of the department’s Guadalupe Bridge Rehabilitation Project. “We really don’t want to open the bridge for a week and have to close it again.”
By early September, Rodriguez said, crews will shift the northbound lanes of U.S. 84/285 in the area to create more distance between traffic and the bridge as the work continues.
And during a weekend in mid-September, he said, the northbound lanes will be closed from 7 p.m. Friday to 5:30 a.m. Monday while workers demolish the old bridge deck. The weekend hasn’t yet been selected, he said.
The Guadalupe Bridge Rehabilitation Project started in September. Just before Hasse Construction Co. Inc. of Albuquerque began the work last year, heavy rains washed out a patch of the bridge deck, exposing steel rebar.
Emergency repairs led to a bridge closure and delayed the rehabilitation work.
Rosanne Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the Department of Transportation’s District 5 office in Santa Fe, said in an email to The New Mexican that along with replacing the deteriorating bridge deck, Hasse Construction will replace supports for the bridge deck, raising them 3 feet to meet the federal minimum height requirements of 16 feet, 3 inches.
Much of the work is temperature-sensitive, Jared Rodriguez said, and will depend on weather conditions. He estimated the bridge will reopen in October and that any necessary finishing touches will be completed in February.