Crew completes pile-driving phase of new bridge

By TOM KANE

HONESDALE, PA - Bad weather isn’t stopping the crew from Leeward Construction. For the last five weeks, they have been pounding steel beams into the ground at the site next to the Lackawaxen River, despite inclement weather. The beams are now sunk to support the construction of a pier and an abutment for the new Church Street Bridge.

Eighteen beams went down about 84 feet. Leeward engineers have situated several seismographs around the homes near the bridge in order to measure when vibrations might endanger them.

“The pile driving is now over,” said Carla Medura, construction project director for PENNDOT, who is monitoring the project. Leeward Construction of Honesdale is the principal contractor.

There has been no apparent damage to the old homes that sit very near the site, she said.

The next step is to set the forms for poured concrete at the pier that stands in the middle of the river and the abutment that sits next to the Park Street side. “We’re still working below ground,” Medura said. “We have to build a stem of concrete on the pier.”

The workers have begun excavating on the 12th Street side. “We don’t need piles there,” she said.

Despite the time of year and bad weather, the project is moving along according to schedule. “We hope to be completely finished by June of 2010,” she said.

The bridge is one part of a new traffic design that is aimed at improving the flow of traffic through the borough. The rest of the design will see Main Street one-way south and Church Street one-way north.

The $9.5 million bridge will eventually be erected to take traffic on Church Street across the river and west onto Route 6 or north on Route 191.

As more and more people move into the county and surrounding areas, traffic is increasing, some say, at an alarming rate. Already, there has been a marked increase in the flow of garbage-hauling trucks moving toward the Waste Management plant in Beach Lake.

Early last year, the Honesdale Borough Council voted to reject the bridge project, which was opposed by local businesses. But after much local discussion, the council reversed itself. The reasoning was that if they rejected the PENNDOT proposal, they would lose the money that the agency put in their budget.

“On the south end of Main Street, we will establish three new traffic lights,” Medura said. “There will be a light at the intersection of Cliff Street and Willow, another at Church and Fourth and another at Fourth and Terrace. The lights will be timed so that anyone going at the speed limit would move easily and safely through the intersections. Fourth Street will be widened to four lanes.”

One outspoken critic, Stan Pratt, the former Honesdale fire chief, said that the project is a short-term solution. “This present design was mentioned and rejected 20 years ago,” he said. “We’re going to have to revisit the idea of a bypass around the town, which also was also rejected 20 years ago,” Pratt said. “A bypass is inevitable.”