State transportation officials are close to finishing multi-million dollar emergency repairs to an Augusta overpass, but are still at a loss about who caused the damage.
Maine Department of Transportation (DOT) spokesman Ted Talbot says, by Thursday evening, all the ramps for the Augusta Exit 109 interchange on Western Avenue should be restored to their original configuration.
Last October a DOT maintenance worker discovered that a vehicle had struck an exterior bridge beam, causing significant damage.
“The estimated cost, even though there's still work to be done, when the weather warms up we're going to be back to do some final paving and striping, but close to $3 Million dollars by the time it's all done, maybe just a little bit more,” says Talbot.
He says the overpass now has more over a foot more clearance than it did.
“So that really brings it in line with a lot of the other bridges on the interstate,” says Talbot. “We hope, of course, to lower the number of impacts to this bridge and we're also going to have some overhead warning systems to alert some of the truckers if they are over height.
Talbot says repair work has been completed ahead of schedule.
