Portion of Broadway will be closed next week for repairs

A section of Broadway will be closed next week as the Poplar Bluff Street Department begins permanent repairs to a bridge over an unused Frisco Railroad tunnel.

The roadbed will be removed and replaced with base rock, until overlay can be done in the fall.

“We are going to close Broadway, between Main and Oak, Monday morning,” said Poplar Bluff Street Department Superintendent Jerry Lawson. “We hope to have all of our work completed by Friday afternoon, weather permitting.”

Structural timbers under the Broadway bridge over the old Frisco Railroad have deteriorated to the point where the bridge has become a safety concern for city officials. DAR File Photo/Paul Davis

The decades-old Broadway bridge is in disrepair, with several 2X12-inch support timbers deteriorated so badly they are falling from the structure, Lawson said previously.

A three-ton weight limit was placed on the bridge in 2017, on the advice of engineers. It has forced the Poplar Bluff Fire Department to reroute trucks around the bridge since that time.

“All of that old infrastructure was designed for lighter weight vehicles and is under-designed for today’s age,” Lawson explained in November, when the repair plans were announced.

The city chose to have the street department work on the project, as they had time, because outside bids placed repair costs at as much as $165,000.

Street department workers have already brought in clay to fill the bottom portion of the tunnel to approximately six feet, Lawson said. The clay was donated by a Poplar Bluff businessman at no cost.

The remaining work needs to be done from the upper part of the roadbed, he said.

It will include removing all of the existing roadbed.

More fill material will be brought in and base rock will be put down.

The base rock will remain until late September, to ensure proper compaction of the new fill material, Lawson said.

The street department expects to overlay the repaired area in late September.

The city has budgeted to asphalt a section of Broadway, from Pine to Main, in 2021. It will include a section about two and a half blocks long. The area scheduled for asphalt does not include any exposed brick, Lawson said.