Changes are coming to next year to the Washington St. Bridge.
The bridge is nearly 100 years old and was last renovated in 2004. In 2017 residents gave city officials input on the bridge’s revamp.
The new bridge will remain two lanes, but will be widened to help reduce congestion, a right turn lane will be added going toward Aurora Avenue, and existing turn lanes will be extended.
Bill Novack, the director of Transportation, Engineering and Development for the City of Naperville, said constriction on the bridge could start as early as next year.
“The city completed Phase One engineering. We’re simply waiting on [the Illinois of Department of Transportation] to give their formal approval to it,” said Novack. “And we want to start with our Phase Two, which is the design engineering where they prepare the constriction documents and all. That’s going to take a little over a year.”
From now until the next year, the city hopes to gather land parcels and finish the engineering design plan so they can present the bid in 2020 and begin construction later in the fall.
“We’ll have to do it in two halves- we’ll want to demo the east half probably in January or February, start building that half in March, April, and May. [We’ll] switch over to get the other half in the second half of the year so we can have the entire structure done in 2021.
Cost estimates for the new bridge are between $5-6 million, with 80 percent of that covered by federal funding.
Naperville News 17’s Christian Canizal reports.
