ARDOT designs new bridge plan

Residents across Springdale have been forced to avoid the one-lane bridge over Pump Station Road near Hunt Park for the past two years, and people continue to wonder when the problem will be resolved. The bridge was washed out during extreme flooding in the Spring of 2017 and remains closed to this day.

“The city adopted it as a bond program, and we will handle a couple of years quicker than the highway department would have,” Megan Workman of the Springdale Engineering Department said.

The Arkansas Department of Transportation, or ARDOT, is currently working on a design for the new bridge. The design also takes the Razorback Greenway into consideration, which crosses Pump Station Road just before the original bridge.

“The state is redesigning the new bridge, to work around the addition of the Greenway in the area. The project has moved up the priority list so they can put in the hours to complete the new design,” Workman said.

While the bridge currently does not have a definitive timeline for completion, developments are being made in the reconstruction process, and bidding and construction are expected to begin in at least three months.

“We won’t have finished plans to review for about a month, and then we will have to go through a land acquisition, which will take about two months, and then of course bidding and construction,” Workman said.

While the City of Springdale will be involved in the actual construction of the bridge, ARDOT is in charge of designing the bridge. At this time the city is waiting on the design plans from ARDOT.

The reasoning behind the delay in bridge completion is because ARDOT is involved in many other projects across the state, and this specific bridge was not a top priority.

Because the City of Springdale has now taken up responsibility for the project, reconstruction will be made a higher priority.

“It was an ARDOT project, it was never a City of Springdale project, but we took it on to finish it before ARDOT would even have a chance to take a look at it,” Workman said.

While there is no set completion date on the bridge, progress is being made.