Fort Street Bridge reopens to traffic

Detroit — The Fort Street Bridge has reopened about a year after work on the span was originally scheduled for completion.

One lane of the nearly century-old draw bridge opened in each direction at about 5:45 p.m. Thursday. The double-leaf, fixed-trunnion bascule bridge — or draw bridge — closed for construction in May 2013.

“We hope we’ll get a long life out of this bridge like we did out of the original bridge, which was nearly 100 years old,” Michigan Department of Transportation spokeswoman Diane Cross said Sunday.

According to Cross, construction was slowed by the complexity of repairs, and the need to accommodate river traffic as well as bridge traffic.

“The bridge weighs 8.2 millions pounds, so that has to have quite a few gears to move it up and down,” said Cross, noting that river traffic is monitored from a pilot house on the bridge. “Weather, at times, was an issue as well.”

Cross said MDOT is keeping one lane closed in each direction to provide access for workers who are finishing roof repairs. MDOT expects it will be able to open those lanes in late January when roof repairs are completed.

Currently, it takes almost 20 minutes for the bridge to go up (and another 20 to go down) because it’s operating at reduced power. Eventually, the bridge will be able to open in less than a minute.

MDOT hired Wixom-based bridge builder Toebe for the $46 million project in Spring 2013. The bridge was expected to open in December 2014. The date was pushed back until mid-June, then mid-September, then end of November and then mid-December.

The Fort Street Bridge and a few others like it were built on the Rouge River in the 1920s to give ships access to the Ford Motor Co.’s River Rouge manufacturing complex. Bridges like it are sometimes called Chicago-style bascules because they’re widely used in the Windy City.

The 278-foot bridge carries five lanes of traffic and two 8-foot sidewalks over the river between Dix and Interstate 75 in Detroit.

An operator opens the bridge an average of six to eight times per day to allow watercraft to pass through the shipping channel. On most occasions, it’s open for only a short time with about 10 percent lasting 15 minutes or more, according to MDOT.

Before MDOT closed the bridge for repairs, traffic over the bridge averaged about 10,450 vehicles a day, according to the agency’s most recent data.

There are two other bridges that cross over the Rouge River. One is Interstate 75’s, about a third of a mile downriver and to the south and east of Fort Street. The other is the West Jefferson Avenue Bridge, which is about a third of a mile south and east of the I-75 bridge. The state owns and maintains both the Fort Street and I-75 bridges, while Wayne County is responsible for the upkeep of the West Jefferson bridge.

State and federal agencies have deemed I-75’s bridge, a major artery for Downriver commuters and truck traffic, “structurally deficient” because of its deteriorating deck surface.

The 48-year-old span, which carries four lanes of traffic each way up to 100 feet over the Rouge and the nearby Marathon refinery, is scheduled for deck replacement in 2017 at an estimated cost of $80 million, according to state officials.

Meanwhile, Jefferson Avenue’s bridge over the river has been out of service since May 2013, when it was lowered onto a passing ship and damaged. But Wayne County officials said in September the project to fix the disabled bridge is underway and expected to be finished by August.

kbouffard@detroitnews.com