Colorado
Colorado Springs is getting a boost in federal dollars to help with aging railroad bridges
The town of Colorado Springs will obtain $2.5 million from the federal authorities to find out the way forward for two growing old railroad bridges south of downtown.
The cash will go towards engineering and environmental work associated to the railroad bridges over south Tejon Road and South Nevada Avenue. The Tejon Road bridge has been in use for greater than a century. The Nevada Avenue bridge was in-built 1948.
Gayle Sturdivant, deputy public works director for Colorado Springs, mentioned the Tejon bridge is particularly of concern.
“Each us and the railroads have checked out doing momentary enhancements on the bridge to get it to limp alongside by way of its life cycle, however it’s in determined want of being changed,” she mentioned.
Each have a handful of issues of safety for pedestrians and bicyclists touring below them in addition to points with clearance for giant industrial automobiles. In response to town’s web site, the freight rail hall now not serves lots of the properties within the space, however continues to be used closely by the Union Pacific and BNSF railroads as a key north-south by way of route.
The town has but to determine precisely what to do to enhance the crossing, however a number of alternate options are being thought-about. These embrace varied shifts to the alignment of the railroad tracks.
“With a purpose to get sufficient vertical clearance and nonetheless get Tejon and Nevada streets to work with all the present land makes use of which might be adjoining to these roads, we actually want to maneuver that rail alignment to get that vertical clearance beneath them,” Sturdivant mentioned.
Repairing the bridges the place they’re now is just not an possibility, because it would not enhance security or tackle points with the peak of the crossings. Different concepts which were scrapped embrace relocating the rail underground, making Nevada Ave. and Tejon St. a one-way pair, and relocating the rail out of the downtown space.
The undertaking is predicted to value $100 million and consists of work on two different bridges throughout the Shooks Run hall. The town of Colorado Springs is contributing an extra $1.3 million to the undertaking utilizing funds from the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority (PPRTA).