Improvements planned for a dozen Callaway County bridges in 2017

As the Missouri River Bridge project wraps up, Callaway County drivers may face more bridge-work delays next year.

The Missouri Department of Transportation is set to make improvements to 12 bridges across the county in 2017.

Tuesday, MoDOT held a public meeting at the Callaway Electric Cooperative in Fulton to give more information on the projects.

The improvements will cost about $8 million. The funds will come from the construction budget through the Statewide Transportation Program, or STIP.

The work is set to start in March or April and will go though next fall, likely ending by November, according to MoDOT Central District Project Manager Mike Dusenberg.

“They’ll be some time periods where you’ll have a couple of routes closed in different areas, but we’re not going to be closing multiple bridges in the same vicinity at the same time,” Dusenberg said. “We want to make sure we maintain access for everybody during the construction work.”

The Route 54 eastbound and westbound bridges over I-70 at Kingdom City see the most traffic out of the bridges to be repaired with about 17,000 vehicles a day.

Most of the work on the two Kingdom City bridges, which will mostly include concrete patchwork, will be done at night to avoid any major delays, according to Duesenberg.

Crews will do concrete patchwork on several other bridges and replace the bridge decks at five locations. Dusenberg said drivers may face minor backups at peak travel times.

Only one bridge is in critical condition and is set to be shut down and replaced. It is an 80-year-old bridge on Route H over Davis Creek.

“They’ll be a lot of lane drops, traffic control setups during a lot of this work, some detours and things set up and so it’ll just take some time and some patience,” Dusenberg said.

Here is a full list of the bridges set to be repaired:

the Route 54 east and westbound bridges over I-70 the Route 54 east and westbound bridges over Richland Creek the Route 54 eastbound bridge over the KCR Railroad the Route 54 eastbound bridge over Stinson Creek the Route 54 eastbound bridge over Business Route 54 the Route 54 bridge over Middle River the Route 54 bridge over Hillers Creek the Route H bridge over Davis Creek the Route O bridge over Crows Fork Creek the Route UU bridge over Crows Fork Creek