Let's face it; if you are like me, when a road construction project gums up your normal driving route, you get a little hot about it. So when viewers called me, angry about the fact that the road they used everyday for business was now completely off limits, I felt for them. They had questions. The answers I found for them are the subject of this Fact Finder.
Stop by B and Z Well Drilling most days and you'll probably see empty garages. There fleet of vehicles is out on the roads all around Leelanau County hard at work. According to the boss, John Zientek, they company has 7 or 8 heavy trucks serving the needs of their customers. That's a lot of driving on a lot of different roads, but thanks to a new sign on the tiny little bridge in the village of Cedar, B and Z and other large vehicles won't be on this road in the future. The sign explains that there are new weight limits on the bridge, roughly half of what was allowed to cross last year.
Zientek says "I really can't understand it because we have been going across that bridge since '78 with the same equipment. It doesn't make any sense to me why all of a sudden they have weight limits when we never had them in the past."
On a bridge that used to allow more than 60 tons to roll over it, now, only a fraction is permitted depending on the number of axles. Trips that used to be only a few miles for B and Z, now are 20 or more in order to detour around the restricted bridge. Zientek says "Well it's just going to put a big damper on a lot of our jobs that go to Leland, or Lake Leelanau. We got to drive another 20 miles around instead of being able to go around that way. "
B and Z is certainly not alone. Every truck that makes a delivery to the grocery store, the gas station, cherry growers hauling to market, even the fire department has had to figure out how heavy their trucks are, and for most find a different way around this tiny bridge in Cedar.
So why the new lower limits? Is the bridge falling apart? No! The real reason for the change may have more to do with paperwork than roadwork. According to Jim Johnson, the engineer with the Leelanau County Road Commission, the Commission recently hired a consultant to review the bridge and "they used newer methods that are now prescribed by changes in federal guidelines, federal rules and they came up with a much lower rating than had been attributed to the bridge in years gone by."
So with those new methods, a new conclusion has resulted in new signs for this old bridge. While the road commission says, the bridge is still sound and is holding up well for its age, they still warn that these signs are not to be dismissed. Johnson warns "people who exceed these weight restrictions do have the potential of damaging the bridge or at the absolute worst causing a collapse. That doesn't happen often but it has happened a few times, here in the state of Michigan and the results have not been good for anyone."
Perhaps it's ironic, that the closest building to the bridge is the fire department. They have some of the heaviest trucks around and need to get places faster than anyone. The fire department has been given special permission to drive their heaviest vehicles over the bridge and it's not just because of the emergency nature of their trips. Another reason is because the bridge is so short and the trucks are so long, that the truck never has its front and rear wheels on it at the same time. The weight is spread out, and posses less of a danger to the bridge.
So what do you think? Does this make sense to you? Do you have a solution that might work for everyone?
Please post a comment below.
