Town advances talk of new bridge

Author: Alice Wisener

With the frenzy of Middlebury's annual Fall Family Weekend just around the corner, and the hectic move-in day of fall semester just barely behind us, it is easy to forget that students are not the only ones around here stressed when the population of Middlebury temporarily explodes. It is easy to overlook the considerable amount of stress that is also put upon the 115-year-old Battell Bridge in the heart of Middlebury that - perhaps begrudgingly - allows all those cars filled with students, proud parents and bags of new merchandise to creak across it. An estimated 16,000 vehicles cross the bridge daily, and during those busy days, the flow usually increases to 20,000 or more.

Perhaps you have heard rumors about a new bridge over Otter Creek connecting Cross Street to the intersection of Main Street and College Street. Actually, this discussion is far from a novel concept, the idea and even the location has been proposed by every one of the independent traffic engineering analyses in the past 50 years.

The new bridge will not only relieve much of the traffic flow on Battell Bridge, but will also provide a second route for fire, ambulance and police response. Right now, if Battell Bridge were blocked, the next nearest route would be a 15-mile detour and the Pulp Mill Covered Bridge, which, although known for its place in history, is so known for its reliability.

The obvious need to repair the Battell Bridge increases every day, but it cannot be closed now because of its strategic role in traffic flow. The Main Street and Merchants Row railroad bridges are in desperate need of being replaced as well. A new in-town bridge will allow the much-needed construction to take place without major disruption.

On March 4, 2008, Middlebury residents voted 1,535 to 673 in favor of authorizing the 30-year, $16 million bond issue to fund the construction of the new in-town bridge.

In the past, the town had been working with the state and federal governments to try and fund the building of the new bridge, but were disappointingly told that it would be somewhere between 15 and 20 years before anything could even begin, due to the many demands put on the funding source.

It was then that the College stepped in and announced in November 2007 its agreement to make an annual donation of $600,000 in the 30 years following the bridge's completion. In total the College will donate $9 million to the cause, indeed absorbing most of the cost. The remaining $7 million will come from local option taxes on meals, rooms, merchandise, and alcohol sold in Middlebury.

"This gift is a response to a request from the town and it reflects the College's desire to be involved in a project that directly affects the safety of the Middlebury community," wrote Middlebury College President Ronald D. Liebowitz in a 2007 News Release. "It is integral to the safety of students, faculty, staff, other area residents, and to the betterment of the town."

With the financial means, construction may begin as early as 2009 and be completed as early fall 2010.

The design team for the new in-town bridge will be a combination of Kubricky Construction Corp., GeoDesign Inc., J.P. Carrara & Sons and VHB Pioneer.

The project will consist of not only the construction of a new bridge, but also the implementation of a roundabout at the intersection of College Street and Main Street. Part of College Street will be converted into a one-way road with a new road behind the Municipal Gym as a connector, and new traffic lights will be put in at its intersection with South Main Street.

The conversation about the building project continues in town with each busy Middlebury weekend.

"The new bridge is definitely going to influence the college-community relations for the good," said 26-year-old Erika Paine, an employee at Vermont's Own. "Businesses around here thrive when college parents come up and the new bridge will facilitate access to town and make shopping much less hectic," Paine said.

While the College's obvious role in the building project makes the conversation largely about the relationship between town and campus, there is the even larger role that the bridge will have in the lives of Middlebury's citizens. Erika Paine recounted her story of driving across the Pulp Mill Covered Bridge one day and seeing the car in front of her with a trailer hitch turn too sharply and get stuck. "I got out of the car to help and realized that I knew the person driving. I walked up to him and said, 'what are you doing?! You're a local!'" she laughed. "Yes, the construction of the bridge will help everybody," she said.

Even though support for the new bridge project is overwhelming, there are still those with thoughts and concerns. Local artist Roger Desautels, for one, questioned whether the new roundabout was positioned correctly. As the date of the building of the bridge grows nearer, more questions are posed, more eyebrows are raised and more fears are felt, but the approaching project seems exciting for Middlebury residents.

In a world where the cost of using a car is only increasing, the new bridge will provide an opportunity for easy foot and bicycle access as well. Perhaps the bridge will even spark the development of new businesses, remove a little bit of the crazy from move-in days and make Fall Family Weekends even more widely anticipated.