Bridge price tag nears $7M

By JASON ARMSTRONG

Tribune-Herald staff writer

Hawaii County expects it will cost $6.9 million to reinforce Hilo’s Reed’s Island bridge so the wooden arch can hold fire trucks and other large vehicles.

The bridge has a foundation that’s more than a century old and capable of withstanding a six-ton vehicle, said project engineer Robert Yanabu of the county’s Department of Public Works.

That load rating will be boosted to 20 tons by replacing the wooden surface with steel beams and decking, adding concrete anchors to the foundation and installing lateral bracing, he said.

Those steps will allow the bridge to handle emergency vehicles, withstand earthquakes and extend the service life, according to a background document from the Department of Public Works.

“The big reason is (Reed’s Island) residents have been asking for many years to raise the weight limit so fire trucks can cross the bridge,” Yanabu said.

The only access those vehicles now have to reach the roughly 40 Kaiulani Street homes is to cross six private properties and pass through a locked gate located at the mauka end of the one-lane road, he said.

Those landowners granted temporary access to residents when the Reed’s Island bridge was closed briefly last April to determine if it meets state and federal standards, Yanabu said.

They will be asked to provide the same access during the expected 11-month-long construction phase needed to reinforce the bridge, he said.

The Federal Highway Administration has offered to pay $5.1 million, or 80 percent, toward the construction cost, which excludes a $593,000 expense for design and survey work. The county would borrow the nearly $1.3 million balance.

“That’s our best estimate right now,” Yanabu said of the $6.9 million price tag.

By comparison, the state Department of Transportation spent $38 million replacing the far-larger Kealakaha Stream bridge in Ookala. Completed in May 2010, that three-year-long construction project involved building a wider, straighter bridge spanning nearly 650 feet over a 200-foot drop.

A bill accepting the federal money is scheduled to be heard by the County Council’s Finance Committee during its 8:30 a.m. meeting Tuesday in Hilo.

“We’re in the process of soliciting bids right now,” Yanabu said Friday of a process that was started Dec. 27.

He said the announced Feb. 23 bid-opening date likely will be pushed back three weeks because some of the interested contractors asked for more time to prepare their bid package.

“It’s an elaborate award process,” he said of necessary steps like gaining state approval of the contract terms since the federal money is filtered through the state.

In addition to the reinforcing steel members, the county’s specifications call for applying a urethane coating, in addition to hot-dipped galvanizing, to make them last longer.

Yanabu said those steps should extend the life of the bridge beyond 50 years.

It’s is the only public way to reach Reed’s Island, named because the residential community that includes at least one business is bordered on two sides by rivers.

Area residents interviewed Thursday expressed mixed reactions to the bridge project.

“The bridge has not been a problem for the B&B at all,” said Barbara Andersen, who has owned the Shipman House Bed and Breakfast Inn for nearly 15 years.

Ambulances occasionally drive across the bridge, said Andersen, who noted she fought efforts to replace it with a wide, concrete version that would not fit with the community.

“How stupid. It would come across to a little road,” added Andersen, who wants any improvements to maintain the look of the existing bridge she called historic.

“This one is special to Reed’s Island,” she said.

Up the road lives Sharon DeMello Vannatta, the self-described “mayor of Reed’s Island.”

A Kaiulani Street resident for more than 40 years, Vannatta said a stronger bridge is needed to accommodate fire trucks, yet feels none will be provided.

“I’m so sick and tired of that story because they’ve been ‘replacing’ that bridge for at least the last 25 years,” she said. “I don’t think it’s going to happen in my lifetime.”

That wouldn’t bother neighbor Per Friberg.

“I’m not too worried about it,” Friberg said when asked about the ability of emergency vehicles to reach his home.

He did, however, question the estimated $6.9 million price tag.

“That seems awfully high,” Friberg said, adding he had heard a much lower figure.

Vannatta said that’s a “pittance compared to what they spend on other things.”

Email Jason Armstrong at jarmstrong@hawaiitribune-herald.com.