Greene County engineer Wade Weiss hopes to have County Road E-57 between K and L Avenues open again by the end of the week. The stretch of road has been closed since Pepsi truck driver Brad Ruhnke of Carroll lost control and dropped part of his rig through a bridge railing and into Greenbrier Creek last week.
Weiss reported to the county supervisors on Monday that he plans to get concrete barrier rails (the temporary barriers often seen in highway construction zones) and place them along the bridge Thursday or Friday.
The bridge will be posted as a narrow bridge. Weiss said its unknown at this time if the old rail will be repaired in the spring.
That condition of the bridge even before the accident was “not so hot,” as Weiss had told the supervisors at their Nov. 21 meeting. At that time he told them he planned to move replacing the bridge up a year on the construction schedule to the summer of 2018. That moved work on E-18 west of Paton back a year to 2019.
According to Weiss, fewer than 10 percent of the bridges on Greene County roads require posted weight limits due to their condition. The state average is 50 percent.
