By ROLLAND KIDDER

One day this summer, local officials were invited on relatively short notice to an announcement by the governor that the state Department of Transportation had awarded a contract to rehabilitate the I-86 Chautauqua Lake Bridge. What caught my eye was the amount of the contract — $78 million. That is a lot of money in anyone’s book.

For the past few years, I had noticed State DOT crews spending a lot of time patching the pavement on the bridge. I assumed that it was normal highway maintenance, but what we know now is that they were trying to stay ahead of a deteriorating bridge deck.

It finally became apparent that no amount of patching was going to fix the problem. The whole bridge deck and railing system of the structure need to be replaced, and inspection of the bridge said that the job shouldn’t be delayed. That is why the whole matter sort of “popped up” on the public’s radar screen without a lot of notice.

I asked a person knowledgeable of bridge construction a couple of years ago about all of the time being spent on patching the Chautauqua Lake Bridge. He didn’t have first-hand knowledge of the situation but had heard “through the grapevine” that the original bridge decking just hadn’t been built thick and strong enough to take the pounding it had encountered.

We will probably never know the cause, but now we know the truth from engineering reports on the bridge. Much of the decking has been rated as in “poor” condition and some of it as “severe” in terms of deterioration. Thus, I am pleased that the state has “taken the bull by the horns” to fix it.

What this means though is that much of the superstructure of the bridge must essentially be removed and replaced. The main girders will stay but the bearings they sit upon will also be replaced. Most of the steel above that will be replaced, new rebar for the deck, new railings and new pavement with good friction characteristics will be laid.

The big headache, of course, for the traveling public will be the restrictions placed on traffic over the bridge for the next three years. The plan is to keep two lanes of traffic open most of the time. However, the contractor will be allowed to stop traffic from time-to-time between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. when major concrete pours or other activities require it.

During such times, that means that Routes 394 and 430 on each side of the lake are going to become very busy. It is my assumption that the primary detour route will be through Mayville, though it is possible that diverted traffic may also go through Lakewood and Jamestown. We don’t fully know these details yet.

The good news is that we need the bridge, and the state, with a lot of federal financial help, is going to fix it.

I proposed in an earlier article that consideration be given to adding a bikeway/walkway to the project. I still hope this idea can be explored. I also know that we should not delay the work that is now planned.

Our Chautauqua Lake Bridge has some serious problems, and the sooner we can get it repaired and back up in full operation — the better.

Rolland Kidder is a resident of Stow and a former state Assemblyman.