Stalled Memorial Bridge Repairs Frustrate Portsmouth Residents

Walk out on Portsmouth’s Memorial Bridge, and its girders above deck are laced with rust and peeling paint.

Bob Landry of New Hampshire’s Department of Transportation says there’s even more wear and tear beneath the metal grate the cars travel over.

It’s a little hard to see looking down from the grid but you can see some of the members in there, their decay. Now you’ve got an open deck, which allows anything coming through on a car vehicle, salt etc. to go through and land right on top of them steel beams and you can see the steel beams are starting to decay….

Both the Memorial Bridge and Sara Mildred Long Bridge a bit up river are both “vertical lift bridges”.

That means they have sections that mechanically rise to allow a ship to pass under.

Memorial Bridge also serves as the only way for bicyclists and pedestrians to cross between Portsmouth and Kittery.

The DOT’s Bob Landry.

What you do see here is you see very high pedestrian uses. As we just saw walk by, um averaging, We’re going to check these numbers but according to the earlier study about 400 a day. I’m sure that was during better times, like today where it’s sort of a nice day, you see more activity.

The plan both states originally worked up would have replaced the lifting section of the Memorial Bridge.

That renovation would have lasted at least another 40 years.

But now both states have hired consultants to do some research on what might be the best long term solution.

Those consultants, together with state officials, brought their ideas to dozens of interested citizens at Portsmouth High School on Monday.

At the meeting, consultant Carol Morris said the states could potentially snare some federal stimulus money.

We know that the minimum grant would be 20 million and the maximum would be what did they say 300…300. 20%. That’s really all we know. There really hasn’t been any guidance from the federal government on what the criteria are or what the best approach might be or anything like that.

Morris and a consultant from the firm that designed Boston’s Leonard Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge laid out a 16 month plan to complete their study and make a recommendation.

They said the study would go forward with or without knowing whether the states get more stimulus money.

But Portsmouth resident Steve Pesci said he was disappointed the study would take so long.

I just wondered if it might have been more prudent in terms of opportunity cost, cost to the taxpayers to simply rebid the project yep and take advantage of some of the economic realities….the schedule you lay out now, there won’t be any rebidding of projects should it even proceed for another year and a half. By then the economy will be doing great, I suspect, and the bids will come in higher than ever before.

Pesci wasn’t the only resident disappointed with the lack of action regarding Memorial Bridge.

Here’s Peter Somssich of Portsmouth.

There’s a big danger that this is just a big waste of time. And I say this not because I know anything intimately about it but it seems to me that the political first will from the side of Maine has to be there that says this bridge replacement is high priority we’re going to get it done, we’re going to get it done in a certain amount of time, no matter what the outcome of this study committee is.

New Hampshire’s Transportation Commissioner said he didn’t think Maine officials lacked the resolve to rebuild the Memorial Bridge.

George Campbell said New Hampshire was just better equipped at this point to finance its share of the project.

Campell said Maine has other bridges it needs to fund, and it doesn’t do the kind of 10 year planning that New Hampshire does.

The connections study is one way without stimulus to keep Maine engaged in the process and looking for the money. That’s why the Connections study’s being done and its not a wasted effort. Its their way to kind of create their own ten year capital plan.

The consultants say they’ll be gathering information over the next few months, and will hold more community meetings later on.

In the meantime, the National Trust for Historic Preservation in New England has included Memorial Bridge on its list of the “11 Most Endangered Historic Places”.

The group calls the bridge unique because of its age, and because it is the oldest surviving “vertical lift” bridge still operating in the country.