CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – More than two weeks after VDOT began an emergency closure of the Proffit Rd. bridge over the Norfolk Southern Railroad tracks, there is still no work timeline for the repairs, VDOT Resident Engineer Greg Cooley told the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors Wednesday.
Cooley attributed the lack of a timeline to “complicating factors.”
“This bridge is 100% within railroad right-of-way and as a Department of Transportation it makes working there a challenge,” he said. “Just for us to be able to go into the railroad right-of-way to assess the structure we had to create and get a permit approved by the railroad, it takes time,” Cooley told supervisors. “Luckily we were able to push the permit process up to the state’s top priority, which basically means we pushed a bunch of other ones down below us, and we were able to access that bridge on Monday of this week.”
In addition, VDOT had to acquire specialized railroad flaggers that Cooley said they have to do anytime they put personnel onto railroad right of way, even though the workers were out nowhere near the tracks.
“And they have to monitor everything we do out there,” Cooley said.
In addition, Cooley said it takes time to assess a bridge this old because a piece of steel may be fine in some places and corroded in others and that complicates the calculations in the work they have to do.
The bridge team is working around-the-clock, he said, and has brought in consultants and there’s another site visit Thursday.
“We’re coming up with a plan right now to fix it and our best-case scenario is in the months,” he said.
“If everything went well,” Rivanna Supervisor Bea LaPisto Kirtley asked Cooley, “Do you think it could be open in another two months?”
“If everything goes well, I would say three months at this point, and that’s stars aligned,” Cooley replied.
“Well, I’m going to be praying to the stars,” Kirtley said.
Cooley said when construction starts they’ll have to do the same permitting process with the railroad to access the right-of-way, and how much they’ll have to do that depends on how deep into the right-of-way workers have to go.
Kirtley, Jack Jouett Supervisor Sally Duncan and White Hall Supervisor Ann Mallek also asked Cooley to address the signage about the truck limitations on Proffit.
Duncan and Mallek don’t believe the current signage is adequate with the one sign on Rt. 29 well prior to the intersection.
Duncan asked for the words Proffit Rd. to be included on the sign since a lot of people don’t know what Rt. 649 is, and Mallek asked if there could be maybe some blinking lights that could bring more attention to it.
Kirtley noted the importance of the proper signage because she said once a large truck gets going on Proffit, there’s nowhere to turn around.
Cooley did not give a time when the actual work will start.
