The Poplar Street bridge over Dry Creek has some major problems, which Hayden town government is trying to resolve. The task has been complicated by a federal funding freeze in Washington, D.C., driven by the Trump Administration.

The Poplar Street bridge was built by the town in 1975, with steel girders resting on concrete abutments. The bridge is 32 feet by 40 feet, has a 60-foot guardrail and a narrow, 2-foot wide sidewalk with no buffer between it and the vehicular traffic.

The Poplar bridge is a key element of a major travel corridor, allowing emergency fire and ambulance access to U.S. Highway 40 as well as heavy haul trucks to Twentymile Coal Mine and Hayden Station. As those operations decommission in future years, heavy hauls are anticipated over the Poplar bridge.

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Problems arise

Go back four years, and Poplar bridge problems first became obvious when a pothole started growing on the surface, or deck, of the bridge.

The pothole grew so wide and deep, said Town Manager Matt Mendisco, that asphalt deck material started falling down into the creek bed, and the bridge was closed for two weeks for an $80,000 patch job.

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The patch job has held up fairly well, but concerns were heightened two years ago in mid-April, when heavy spring runoff flooded that side of town and even swept over the Poplar Street bridge. 

The more that town staff and council members looked at the Poplar Street bridge, the more they realized the busy bridge needed major rehabilitation. Just looking at scrape marks on the bridge guardrail, said Mendisco, it was obvious there had been unreported accidents on the bridge. Drivers had jumped the narrow sidewalk, hit the guardrail and bounced back to the pavement.

“It was looking like a major accident involving pedestrians,” said Mendisco, “was a matter of when, not if.”

Hayden Mayor Ryan Banks agreed.

“It looked like an accident waiting to happen,” he said.

It was decided that the Poplar bridge needed new decking, paving and a separate pedestrian bridge like the town had on the newer Third Street bridge, over Dry Creek, just one street to the west of Poplar. That Third Street bridge has a pedestrian bridge, buffered from the street bridge by a guardrail and a sturdy iron fence protecting foot or bike traffic.

Cost estimate

Last September, the town hired a construction project management firm to come up with a cost estimate for the Poplar Street bridge.

“We had a $680,000 estimate,” said Mendisco.

Some $480,000 was later earmarked in a federal grant, but recent actions in Washington D.C. effectively froze that money, blocking disbursement to a wide range of local governments looking for federal help.

While House Republicans have passed a bill to fund government into September, the bill must be passed by the Senate and signed by the president to become law.

“Things are up in the air,” said Mendisco.

The best-case scenario, at this point, is that the town might be able to cobble together $400,000 to repair the bridge decking from the metal girders up.

The pedestrian bridge, emulating the one on Third Street, will have to wait for funding, said Mendisco. The town might be able to designate a bike/pedestrian path on the Poplar bridge, he added, if state highway engineers allow it.