RUMFORD — The Maine Department of Transportation has settled on a new alignment for future replacement of the Martin Memorial Bridge over the Androscoggin River at Rumford Point.

Now it’s a matter of getting federal funding for the project and investigating safety concerns raised by a few of the 30 people attending last week’s informational meeting.

“I’d say it was a good meeting, and we are trying to address the concerns of those four or five people that talked specifically about safety,” Ben Condon, project manager, said Friday.

State engineers want to move the span 600 feet upriver and tie it in where three dilapidated buildings now stand.

The channel is narrower there, so it means building a shorter, less costly span and siting it for greater sight distance on Route 2 than what’s currently available.

Martin Memorial Bridge is a deteriorating 600-foot-long, three-span, steel-trussed bridge built 56 years ago. It is 24 feet wide, curb to curb.

“For a truss bridge, it’s not very wide,” Condon said.

The state is proposing to make the new bridge 32 feet wide, curb to curb. It will have 11-foot-wide travel lanes and 5-foot-wide shoulders to better accommodate snowmobile traffic.

At the last informational meeting on June 8, 2011, MDOT presented plans to move the bridge immediately upstream, but most didn’t like the sight distance.

“The alignment we presented at the last public meeting had an unobstructed view looking right, but your sight distance looking left was about 300 to about 350 feet, because of the curve and the home that sticks out in the curve,” Condon said.

“This new alignment has 750 feet of sight distance in either direction, which would help at the turn, and we believe it is a vast improvement over the current intersection.”

One person, who lives directly across from where the new alignment will enter a new intersection, didn’t like it, Condon said. The person worried about safety for their home and a potential plummet of property values.

Others, he said, worried about the high volume of accidents within the tight curve and Route 232 intersection.

That’s why MDOT engineers will do a safety audit to research those accidents to determine mitigating factors.

Condon reiterated what he said at the June meeting that the issue behind the accidents wasn’t the design of the bridge or roadway, but rather drivers exceeding the 35 mph speed limit.

“So it’s more of an enforcement issue creating the safety issue at that intersection,” he said.

Still, Condon said safety concerns raised Tuesday will be investigated and corrected as needed to ensure “we’re not building something that is considered a safety hazard.”

Should the MDOT be awarded the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program grant, the project will likely go out to bid within the next year and a half.

But for now, they’ll work to complete a final design to be ready to advertise when the money does arrive.

Among other issues raised were flooding along Route 232 and large embankments needed for the new span.

Condon said the flooding issues relate to major storm events, which engineers will evaluate and attempt to correct as best as possible.

“But we don’t want to chase a problem down the road, which sometimes is what you end up doing when you fix a problem in one spot,” he said.

As for the large embankments, Condon said some type of overflow piping will be needed to help equalize water during flooding conditions.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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