Driving on Route 202 through Hampden will be different over the next four years as more than $15 million of bridge repair projects get underway.
Federal grants will fund repairs to three bridges along Route 202. Two of the bridges cross the Souadabscook Stream, one for northbound traffic and the other for southbound. The third bridge crosses the Maine Central Railroad near Mecaw Road.
Construction for the Souadabscook bridges will be staggered and the plan is for bids to open this summer, said Paul Merrill, Maine Department of Transportation communications director. Traffic patterns will change, as bridges are inaccessible to drivers during construction and lanes of traffic will be limited. However, those limitations will not start until 2025.
The concrete that supports the driving surface will be replaced on the bridges, project manager Julie Brask said. The support beams will remain.
The first bridge across the Souadabscook Stream will be built in 2025, while the second bridge is scheduled for 2026. Secondary work will be finished in 2027.
Traffic will not be able to cross the bridge that is under construction. Instead, all traffic will be on one bridge, meaning only one lane will be available for each direction of travel compared with the typical two lanes.
Work on the bridge over the railroad goes out for bid this summer, with construction expected to be done in 2025, Merrill said. Only a single lane of traffic will be able to cross the bridge at a time. A temporary signal will control alternating traffic.
Each of the Souadabscook bridges will cost about $5.51 million, while the bridge over the railroad will cost about $4.51 million, according to the department of transportation. That funding comes from the Federal Highway Administration’s Nationally Significant Multimodal Freight & Highway Projects program.
The bridge repairs are part of $4.7 billion of transportation projects happening across the state in the next three years.
