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Two Tonganoxie Road bridges to be replaced next year

By Elvyn Jones - | Aug 31, 2010

Travel between Tonganoxie and Leavenworth will be complicated next year with the replacement of two bridges at Stranger Creek on Tonganoxie Road.

The work will replace the two 24-feet-wide bridges built in 1939 with structures 32 feet wide, said Mickey Swartzkopf, deputy county engineer. The project is to be bid in February 2011, and demolition of the existing bridges will start in late winter or early spring, he said.

The project is being paid for from federal transportation funds the Kansas Department of Transportation administers. The county is to pay 20 percent of the cost to remove and replace the bridges while KDOT will provide the remainder. The county is responsible for right-of-way acquisition, utility relocation and engineering design, Swartzkopf said.

The marked detour will be Leavenworth County 9 and Dempsy Road, Swartzkopf said. It is assumed some local traffic will use gravel roads and that some who use the road to get from Tonganoxie to northeastern county destinations would use U.S. Highway 24/40 and Kansas Highway 7, he said.

The county performed some work on the bridges this spring to stabilize the bridges, Swartzkopf said.

With the exception of two bridges over the Kansas River near De Soto and Eudora the county owns jointly with Johnson and Douglass counties, respectively, the bridge over Stranger Creek to be replaced is the longest county-owned bridge, County Engineer Mike Spickelmier said.

The shorter bridge over the overflow channel has a wooden trestle, Spickelmier said.