It may be just a little out-of-the-way bridge, but the 13.8-metre span over Grier Creek is raising some big issues.

Built in 1920, the Grier Creek bridge is on the townline road that borders The Blue Mountains and Grey Highlands. The bridge is at the bottom of a narrow valley just south of Clark St. (30th Sideroad) and a few kilometres north of Grey Rd. 40.

Under a long-standing regulation, Grey County is responsible for bridges on townline roads.
Saturday, the county hosted a public information session on the issue at the Beaver Valley Community Centre. About 60 people attended.

The bridge is in bad shape. The concrete is crumbling and steel reinforcing bars inside the concrete are seriously corroded, a report by consulting engineers Gamsby and Mannerow says.

At most, adds Grey County Director of Transportation and Public Safety Gary Shaw, the bridge will last another two or three years. If the county doesn’t go ahead with a replacement, now, with funding help from the federal-provincial COMRIF program, a  future replacement may have to be funded entirely by local tax dollars, Shaw says.

The engineering report adds the single-lane bridge poses a safety risk, and the road profile — with steep hills immediately north and south of the bridge — “do not meet any current design standard. The extreme vertical gradient and narrow cross-section pose a safety risk to the driving public and prevent winter maintenance.”

As well, says the report, a retaining wall along the west side of the southerly approach to the bridge has failed.

“There is a risk that the southerly approach roadway could be washed out by flows in the adjacent drainage channel,” the report states.

That means a decision has to be made, soon, about the bridge’s future.

The county received approval for funding under the COMRIF program to replace the bridge, but concerns from several neighbouring residents forced an Environmental Assessment to determine the best course of action.

The residents say the road is lightly used and argue that spending $1.4 million on a new two-lane bridge is overkill. Some have concerns that the new bridge will open their quiet valley to more vehicle traffic.

And, they add, the bridge and steep hills force drivers to slow down -- upgrading the road and bridge, they fear, will mean drivers will feel they can move along at higher speeds.

The study is looking at several options. The first is to do nothing, but the engineers say that to do nothing will mean the bridge will continue to deteriorate and will have to be closed within the next few years. If that happens, that section of the townline road would have to be closed.

Another option is to repair the existing bridge.

“Although it may be possible to rehabilitate the structure, deterioration has advanced to the point where repairs are not practical or cost-effective,” says the engineering study. “The cumulative cost of repairs over the long term will be significant, and will not address all of the identified problems.”

The preferred alternative, for the county and the municipalities, is to replace the bridge, either with the existing road profile or with a new profile to one of three standards.

Replacing the bridge and road with the existing geometry, officials say, wouldn’t remove the all the safety issues — and the liability issues — that already exist.

That leaves three options, all related to the standards that would be applied to the project. The bridge and road would be rebuilt to either 50-km-per-hour, 60-km-per-hour, or 80-km-per-hour standards.

Originally, the recommendation was to upgrade the road to an 80-kilometre standard. That would mean raising the roadbed by nine metres (about 30 feet) from the lowest point in order to the reduce the slope of the hills.

That idea didn’t sit well with the residents, who made it clear at Saturday’s public meeting that if the bridge must be replaced, they would favour the 50-kilometre per hour standard. In fact, one man suggested reducing the standard to 40 kilometres per hour, but Shaw said current legislation rules out going below 50 kmph. However, Shaw said, the municipalities can set lower speed limits on that stretch of road.

Reg Russwurm, Director of Engineering for The Blue Mountains, told the meeting his town and Grey Highlands would ensure that appropriate speed limit signs are posted. They could also ask their respective Police Services Boards to step up enforcement in that area.

The 50-km/h speed limit would mean raising the road bed by about 2.5 m (eight feet) and, unlike the 80-km/hr standard, would not require completely rebuilding a one-km section of the road. As well, the COMRIF portion of the project would drop to $700,000 from the $1.4 million.

The issue of safety seemed to be foremost for those present Saturday’s meeting, but there were several different views of how to address the issue.

Several residents believe upgrading the road and replacing the bridge with a two-lane structure will encourage increased speeds and more traffic, and will only lead to more safety problems.

But others said the existing situation is dangerous and there have already been several close calls.

Several farmers said they use the road regularly but worry every time they have to transport farm machinery or truckloads of produce through the valley. And the lack of winter maintenance, they said, means that early snowfalls force them to have to make a much longer trip — out to Grey Rd. 13 and through downtown Clarksburg — to get to storage or processing plants or orchards at other locations.

Roger Dinsmore, who has orchards along the townline, both north and south of the Grier Creek, said he travels the road several times a day.

“This is a very dangerous road,” he said. “We should be careful not to put a price tag on human life.” Retaining the single-lane bridges doesn’t address the safety issues at the crests of the two slopes, he said.

But another neighbour pointed out that no speed signs are posted on the road and there is little or no enforcement.

Carol Solursh, who resides near the bridge, said she worries about speeding vehicles on the road as it is. She told of assisting one young driver who lost control of her vehicle on loose gravel just after the road surface had been graded.

“There are no signs on that road to indicate speed limits, there are no signs to warn of steep hills, there are no signs to warn of a single-lane bridge,”she said. ”If those were addressed that would be so much better than trying to put more traffic through more quickly.”

Her husband, Gerry Solursh, said the residents have asked several times for signage to slow down traffic but their requests have been ignored.

John Ardiel, a farmer who lives on the townline, took another tack, saying he and other neighbours would be happy to see the road improved so that it could be maintained 12 months of the year making access easier for emergency vehicles.

Former county and The Blue Mountains councillor Gail Ardiel told the meeting two of her children have been involved in auto crashes near the Grier Creek bridge and she believes replacing the bridge and upgrading the road will improve the safety for motorists.

“There is a safety factor here. I don’t want to see anybody’s family have any near misses like I did,”she said. “That road needs to be fixed.”

She added that repairing the bridge would be a band-aid solution.

“We’ve band-aided that bridge for too long now,”she said. “It needs a new structure.”

As well, several pointed out that repairing the bridge, instead of replacing it now, will still cost hundreds of thousands of dollars at present and the bridge would have to be replaced in the near future, anyway.

Some of the residents closest to the bridge presented position paper at Saturday’s meeting. Tony Bender, who presented the paper, said that if a two-lane bridge must be built, it should be to the 50-km/hr standard, with the speed limit posted and enforced at 40 km/hr.

The residents want a promise that the municipalities will agree to restrict future road cuts to a 50-km/hr design standard for at least 20 years.

The design of the bridge, Bender added, should be sensitive to the natural beauty of the valley. The bridge should be no more than about 10 metres (31 feet) in width rather than the 20 metres (60 feet) design proposed by the engineers. This would be similar to the design of a bridge installed about 12 years ago on Loree Sideroad between Victoria Corners and Loree.

The group also asked that the county include in the construction budget funds to hire a landscape architect to design terraced gabion basket walls or armour stone to minimize intrusion in the adjacent forest and to avoid huge slopes of rip rap (rock). As well, the landscape architect would design driveway entrances to the road and the restoration of trees and vegetation once construction is complete.

They also want a planting plan to be prepared and executed “with native species to maintain the character of the valley and restore the creekbanks on the private properties where sediment controls and temporary check dams need to be built during construction”.

Finally, the residents want assurances that all required environmental studies will be undertaken and permits obtained from federal, provincial and regional authorities such as the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Ministry of Natural Resources and Grey Sauble Conservation Authority.

More public input will be sought in the next phase of the EA process.