Though the rumble of construction vehicles has stopped for the winter, the success and implications of the Cross Street Bridge continue to grow. What began as a standard and necessary improvement to town infrastructure has turned Middlebury into a model of action and efficiency for other small municipalities.
The sheer length of the preceding saga made the March 2008 decision to begin construction an achievement in itself — the need for a second crossing of Otter Creek in Middlebury has been on the town docket for over 50 years, with many attempts to build a bridge losing steam without funding.
With most transportation projects of this nature, the Federal Highway Administration contributes 80 percent of the funding while the state and local governments split the remaining 20 percent, but past proposals to the federal and state agencies have ended in a “stalemate,” according to Town Selectman Dean George.
“The [Vermont] Agency of Transportation said it just wasn’t a high enough priority for them, and they didn’t have any money to put into the project,” said George. “In the end we were a bit frustrated because nobody was really paying attention to [the project]; everyone had other priorities for their monies. And when we looked at [the timeframe], even if we were able to get the funding, which we weren’t, we’d still be looking at a decade to get this done.”
With an increasing need for better traffic management in downtown Middlebury, George and his fellow Bridge Committee members brainstormed ways for the town to fund the project on its own. Aware of the financial stress already placed on town residents, they came up with the Local Option Tax: a one percent increase in local sales tax that would go directly into a fund for the bridge.
“We knew we couldn’t simply just add the costs to our property tax assessments — that was just too far out of line,” said George. “It’s hard to raise taxes in general, but everyone understands the importance of this project so the town agreed to move forward with [the Local Option Tax].”
After amending the town’s charter to accept the landmark fundraiser, the town still needed additional funding. When the College expressed a mutual interest in seeing the bridge completed, the goal became a reality. Out of the $16 million budget, the College has agreed to pay $9 million over the next 30 years, beginning when the bridge is finished and operational.
“The fact that there can be a collaboration of this sort is something that most towns of 8,000 people don’t have,” said Assistant Town Manager Joseph Colangelo.
“But I think this is the way it really should work in a college town — the college and the town work together to do projects that are beneficial to both parties.”
After breaking new ground in community funding, Middlebury continued to set new standards for municipal development in both the project contract and the physical bridge design. Mark Colgan is the project manager at Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc., the design-build firm Middlebury hired to conduct the bridge project, and while his company does this kind of work on a regular basis, it is still unique in Vermont.
“This is really the state’s first design-build project for transportation, and not only is it funded so uniquely with the town and the College collaborating, they’re doing it in a process that’s never been done before as well, which is to hire the engineer and the contractor as a team,” said Colgan.
Without the many restrictions and bureaucratic hoops of federal funding, the project is also progressing incredibly fast, which will make it ultimately cheaper, Colgan explained.
“This is what we do all the time, design engineering projects, and they’re generally very slow because of all the federal requirements, state requirements, permitting and paperwork,” said Colgan.
“It usually takes about five or six years, but this project has just taken off. We’re not even two years into it and the bridge is almost done. It is going very fast, and less time saves money.”
The Cross Street Bridge, however fast and efficient its production, has not gone up without obstacles. The original bridge design featured a supporting pier in the middle of Otter Creek, but disapproval from the Agency of Natural Resources sent Colgan and his fellow engineers back to the drawing board.
Instead of changing over to a steel structure, the easiest way to span the entire creek, Middlebury remained committed to in-house production with concrete from local precast supplier Carrara. The result is the longest simple span precast/post-tensioned spliced concrete girder in the United States, another example of Middlebury pushing the limits.
“Literally the ceiling heights at [Carrara’s] warehouse were just high enough to lift the beams up with a crane and get them on trailers,” said Colgan. “Everything was stretched to the max.”
From the funding to the design, by all accounts the Cross Street Bridge is an infrastructural marvel, and the project development will serve as an example to many other small towns. Colangelo and George have already given presentations on the process to the League of Cities and Towns, and Colgan expects to do the same across the state.
“When this is completed, I think the state will see a lot of us presenting how this worked, the success of this project,” said Colgan. “When [Middlebury] started it, it really stuck its neck out trying to do things that had never been done before with the funding and the design and everything. To have it be such a huge success in a short amount of time and all within budget is just something Middlebury should be very proud of. I think other towns and cities will start thinking, ‘Look how Middlebury did it. Why can’t we do that?’”
According to Colangelo, the community is proud, and in fact pride in the community itself may have been the driving force behind the project.
“I think people feeling a sense of pride and community involvement with every step of the process is a pretty powerful motivator for the community,” said Colangelo.
“There’s been dozens of people involved just within this community on every aspect of the bridge, whether with landscape design or doing the financial work. It shows a lot of the character of the people here, and I think it’s more special because of that.”
Online supplement: Traffic simulation produced by and courtesy of Mark Colgan, Director of Engineering Services at VHB Pioneer. Rights Reserved:
