Stadium Bridge beam removal goes off without a hitch; traffic to reopen on State Street

The city set up a detour on Sunday that was expected to last through Tuesday, but Nearing said South State Street should reopen to traffic early.

"They're in the final stages of cleaning up and sweeping the road and some other things like that," he said. "We hope to have it open this evening. It'll be open tomorrow for sure."

Due to safety concerns, the city has had the four-lane bridge reduced to two lanes for several months. The five beams that were removed today were under the southernmost eastbound lane of Stadium Boulevard, which has been closed to traffic - thus making it safe to remove the beams.

"The bridge is really made up of a series of beams, and they're all of equal strength," Nearing said. "And so basically what we did is we removed five of the beams, and the remaining beams are just as strong as they were before. In essence, we just made the bridge a little narrower, but it has the same (structural) capacity that it had before."

Nearing said he would argue having the crumbling beams removed actually makes the bridge safer because it reduces the chance of chunks of concrete falling on cars below.

Last month, the Ann Arbor City Council agreed to take emergency action to address safety concerns with the bridge over South State Street. The bridge was deemed a potential danger after an engineering firm warned the city it's possible - though not likely - that "football sized" concrete could fall from the bridge, injuring anyone below.

The city is gearing up for a larger-scale East Stadium bridge replacement project that could potentially cost $22.1 million. City officials announced today that the public is invited to discuss preliminary designs for that project at a meeting scheduled from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Dec. 1.

The meeting will be held in the cafeteria at Pioneer High School. The community is invited to hear more about the project, ask questions and provide input on the design.

Planning for the replacement of the East Stadium bridges over South State Street and the Ann Arbor Railroad originally began in 2007 as part of a larger project. At that time, planning for the reconstruction of East Stadium west to South Main Street and bicycle and pedestrian improvements on South Main from East Stadium to Ann Arbor-Saline Road were also included as part of the project.

Given the increasing urgency of replacing the bridge over South State Street, the project has been scaled back to include only the replacement of the bridges and related improvements.

City officials are encouraging residents to visit www.a2gov.org/stadiumbridges for more details.

Ryan J. Stanton covers government for AnnArbor.com. Reach him at ryanstanton@annarbor.com or 734-623-2529.