Penobscot Narrows Bridge suicide barrier won’t be completed until 2025

To reach a suicide prevention hotline, call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org.

The suicide barriers won’t be completed on the Penobscot Narrows Bridge until early 2025.

That delay comes after the Maine Department of Transportation determined a wind tunnel study was needed to assess the impact of the structure on the bridge, according to the Republican Journal.

Construction was supposed to begin this spring as lighting was updated on the bridge, the Journal reported.

Legislators were first asked in 2014 to approve and provide funding for suicide prevention fencing on the Penobscot Narrows Bridge, but did not approve the proposal until last summer.

In 2015, the state installed suicide hotline phones at either ends of the bridge, in the towns of Verona Island and Prospect, but since then, the phones were found to be not working on more than one occasion.

The barriers will resemble those on Augusta’s Memorial Bridge, which saw 14 suicides before the 11-foot-high fence was installed in 1983. There have been no suicides on the Memorial Bridge since then, according to the Journal.