Cable stay design expected for new Inlet Bridge

By Sam Harvey
Staff Reporter

DelDOT’s Dennis O’Shea left open the possibility that bidders for the bridge portion of the project might still offer a tied arch, but that’s highly doubtful, given lackluster response the last time the department sought bids for that kind of design.

He said he expected most bids would come in for the cable-stayed design. “Something similar to the C&D Canal Bridge,” O’Shea noted.

While the original plans featured a tulip-shaped arch of impressive aesthetics, he said the cable-stayed design had its benefits. “It’s the most economical type of bridge — uses a lot of low-maintenance type materials,” O’Shea pointed out.

As far as procedures for the next round of bidding, he said DelDOT Secretary Nathan Hayward was scheduled to meet with the state’s Bond Bill committee the next day (Jan. 11), requesting permission to advertise for design-build (D-B), rather than low-bid, contracting.

Sen. George Howard Bunting (20th District) and Rep. Gerald Hocker (38th District) attended that meeting, and confirmed on Jan. 11 that the committee had indeed given Hayward permission to pursue D-B.

“Hopefully, they’ll be able to go out to bid within the next few months,” Hocker noted.

According to Bunting, the state was planning to use D-B contracting to build the new Veteran’s Home as well. He said DelDOT’s Carolann Wicks (chief engineer) had assured Bond Bill committee members that more and more contractors had gained a familiarity with D-B contracting and would be able to submit those kinds of bids.

Time is a factor, in two ways. Safety first — tidal currents have scoured away at the piers supporting the existing bridge for decades now. Hocker said the piers actually pre-date the most recent rebuild, back in the early 1950s.

The currents have gouged deep holes in the channel bottom around the piers. DelDOT installed cofferdams around the piers back in the 1980s, and partially filled those holes with huge chunks of concrete, but it was never more than a temporary fix.

O’Shea had it from the Army Corps of Engineers that the existing bridge would have to be stabilized again, if the new bridge project pushes past a five-year timeline. “We plan to be finished in five years,” he stated. “We’re still shooting for a 2010 completion.”

He said he expects contractors will be able to deliver the cable-stayed design within three-and-a-half or four years. “This type of bridge is quicker to construct,” O’Shea pointed out.

Time is also of the essence on the fiscal side. Bunting said more than half of all federal monies provided to the state in recent appropriations were specifically earmarked for the bridge project ($62 million out of a total $114 million). Hocker said the state had just four years to use that money, before it reverts to Washington, D.C.

On the plus side, they said Hayward had informed the Bond Bill committee that DelDOT could still deliver a new bridge, as redesigned and re-bid D-B, for no more money than legislators already had appropriated.

“It’s nice to know he had a backup plan,” Bunting said. “Especially when it comes in costing not a dime more, and maybe even a little less, than the first one.”

They both said they’d emphasized this side of the project to upstate legislators, who’d begun to regard the Indian River Inlet Bridge project as a possible drain on their own local projects.