Perkins overpass to be closed

• By SCOTT DYER AND JEREMY HARPER
• Advocate staff writers
• Published: Mar 17, 2009 - Page: 1A

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The Perkins Road overpass near the Garden District will close to traffic for several months beginning Wednesday so that crews can complete a $3 million rehabilitation of the 72-year-old structure.

The project is expected to be completed in late August, said Jim Ferguson, city-parish Public Works drainage and bridge engineer.

The work will disrupt the approximately 15,000 vehicles a day that use the overpass, Ferguson said.

The official detour is to bypass the overpass — along with a large chunk of the Garden District — by using South Acadian Thruway and Hundred Oaks Avenue, Ferguson said.

Ferguson said Public Works traffic control workers will carefully monitor traffic patterns in the days following the closing of the overpass.

Even though the overpass and that part of Perkins Road are maintained by the city-parish, the overpass rehab project is being funded with federal money administered by the state, he said.

“It is being paid for by the state, the plans were designed by the state’s contractor, and the construction contract was let by the state,” Ferguson said.

The contract was awarded to Coastal Bridge Company LLC, he said.

“This is an old, beautiful concrete structure, and it has spans sitting on caps that have shifted a bit and kind of cracked since it was built in 1937,” Ferguson said.

The contract calls for crews to jack up the spans, fix the caps and make other repairs, and then set the spans back into place, he said.

Improvements also will be made to the roadway approaches to the overpass as part of the project, Ferguson said.

Ferguson said the state formerly maintained the Perkins Road overpass over the Kansas City Southern railroad tracks, but agreed more than 20 years ago to let the city-parish maintain the stretch of Perkins Road from Acadian Thruway to the downtown area.

About 15 years ago, former Public Works Director Fred Raiford held a series of community meetings about whether to replace the overpass or rehabilitate it.