Pittsfield's Pecks Road Bridge Opens
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — After nearly a year of full closure, the Peck's Road bridge is back online.
On Tuesday, the city announced on social media that the $1,689,000 project was complete. The bridge was reduced to one lane of traffic for five years and completely closed last summer after an inspection from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation found six areas of deterioration.
This means that drivers will no longer need to detour from Peck's Road to Onota Street, Vin Herbert Boulevard, and to Valentine Road. There will be no ribbon cutting, according to the city.
Because it had to be fully shut down, construction took about half the time it would have with a partial closure, which was initially planned.
The bridge was first ordered to be closed completely in the fall of 2019.
"The state made the requirement after they performed the annual inspection. After hearing that the bridge needed to be closed we requested a second review of the inspection and state came back, allowing the bridge to be open for a one lane 10 feet wide," Commissioner of Public Services and Utilities Ricardo Morales wrote VIA email, adding that the state of the bridge and prior inspections didn’t find that it needed to be replaced.
Design started after the one lane closure but was "quickly" delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. The state approved the bridge design in spring 2024.
Morales explained that the project was put out to bid, but before the work began, the state's annual inspection determined that the whole span had to be closed down. At that point, the city had to revisit the design and construction plan since it had been assuming that it would be a phased build that maintains one lane of traffic.
"While this represented initial delays and setbacks early in the project construction phase, it resulted in a faster construction since building the bridge one side at a time while maintaining one lane access would have taken a full year's worth of construction instead of six months' actual construction," he wrote.
Work included demolishing the old bridge, which happened last fall, and the reconstruction of the span over Onota Brook. A paved sidewalk runs along one side of the bridge.
The bid was awarded to Rifenburg Construction of Troy, N.Y.
During the inspection in July 2024, MassDOT found:
- settlement in the wearing surface along the east curb, full length by 3 feet wide by up to 2-inches deep (This aligns with bay 17)
- buckling of beam 18 along with a gap between the deck and the beam forming up to 1/4 inch
- beam 17 bottom flange is distorted up to 1/4 inch full length
- beam 16 bottom flange is distorted 3/4 inch full length. (Beam has several holes in the flange and web)
- beam 14 has holes at the north end and the web is distorted 1 1/4 inch out of the plane
- beam 13 web is distorted 5/8 inch out of the plane
Tags: bridge work,
