MoDOT inspects I-70 bridge over Missouri River ahead of rehab project | Dump Truck Company

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The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) is inspecting the Interstate 70 bridge over the Missouri River at Rocheport as part of the planning and preparation for a 2020 bridge rehabilitation, ABC 17 News reports.

“We have to do a rehab project on this bridge in 2020,” MoDOT Engineer Mike Schupp told the news agency. “It was scheduled for 2019 but we pushed that rehab project back one year to wait the outcomes of Proposition D.”

Proposition D was a plan to increase fuel taxes by 10 cents over a period of four years, but voters said no in November. So, without the necessary funding to completely rebuild the bridge, Schupp told the new agency that the department will repair the bridge to give it “another 10 years of life.”

“We know that the rehab project is probably going to run between $15 million to $18 million,” Schupp told the news agency. “As far as condition rating, we expect that the bridge will probably fall into poor condition.”

At the time of the bridge’s last inspection in July 2018, the bridge was listed in “fair” condition. MoDOT State Bridge Engineer Dennis Heckman told the news agency that if the bridge became unsafe, it would be shut down.

“We have over 900 poor bridges on the MoDOT system, but they’re not on I-70 with a long detour carrying traffic across the Missouri River,” Heckman said, according to the news agency. “So we’re trying to see if there are repairs we can make to keep this bridge from dropping into the poor category.”