Upper Gwynedd: bridge replacement costs have climbed by $2 million

A pair of planned bridge projects in Upper Gwynedd are in the works for 2026, but with a price tag much higher than planned.

Township officials heard an update on both, with a new bridge slated to be built and another moved along a busy stretch of Sumneytown Pike.

“There is some bad news on this project. I do a big sigh, because it’s a lot,” said township Manager Sandra Brookley Zadell.

“When we originally cost-estimated this project, it was 2021 when we did the original grant application. Since that time, we all know what’s happened to pricing in our world,” she said.

Upper Gwynedd officials have discussed the need for repairs to the Sumneytown Pike road bridge, located just east of the intersection with Church Road and West Point Pike, since late 2020, and in early 2021 the township secured funds from PennDOT to repair the roadway bridge just next to the pedestrian bridge.

The road bridge was built in 1927 and was found to have age-related deterioration after heavy flooding in August 2020. Township officials have since said the new roadway bridge would be wider than the current one and include pedestrian lanes.

That expanded new bridge led to a suggestion to move the pedestrian bridge, built in the late 2000s, to cross the Towamencin Creek near Gwynedale Way; in early 2024 the township secured just over $300,000 in state grant funds for that move, and this past May the board announced plans to name that pedestrian bridge after Dr. Francis Jeyaraj, a longtime pediatrician and founder of the International Spring Festival, held annually at North Penn High School since the early 1990s.

On October 6, Zadell gave Upper Gwynedd’s commissioners and public an update, announcing that the township’s engineer had finished teh engineering and design work for the new road bridge and the move of the pedestrian bridge, with final permits expected soon and a few major changes since earlier talks thanks to design reviews from PennDOT and the state’s Department of Environmental Protection.

    A worker crosses the pedestrian bridge spanning the Wissahickon Creek next to Sumneytown Pike. The bridge was installed as part of the road widening project in Upper Gwynedd in 2009. (MediaNews Group file photo)
  

“One of those big changes is requiring a larger substructure, to handle the water under the bridge, and the way the creek has changed. We kind of had to put the bridge in at a different angle than we were planning to, thus having to make it wider, which increases costs. And we had no choice on that one,” Zadell said.

“Secondly: construction costs have risen dramatically since 2020, with steel nearly doubling and concrete increasing in cost by about 50 percent, adding nearly $800,000 to the project cost,” she said.

PennDOT has also required the construction be phased in order to minimize traffic disruption, particularly to a longtime township fixture: “to accommodate the county’s largest employer, which is located right up the road from this bridge,” the manager said.

The bottom line?

“A bridge project that we thought was going be about $1.6 million has turned into $3.8 million, for the Sumneytown Pike (road) bridge replacement, as well as $600,000 for the pedestrian bridge relocation,” she said.

So far the township has secured $1.2 million in grant funds from PennDOt and an additional $306,000 from the state’s Department of Community and Economic Development, and the rest will likely come from the township’s capital reserves, according to the manager.

“Altogether, we have about $1.5 million in grant funding, for about $4.4 million worth of work. We have done everything we can, and gone back to our grant funding agencies, to see if we could get additional funding. ‘No, we can’t,’ that’s typically the answer,” she said.

Commissioner Rebecca Moodie asked the manager to explain why the bridge replacement was originally planned, and the manager said it dates back to deterioration discovered by the township engineer several years ago.

“The bridge needs to be replaced. That’s the bottom line. And although these cost increase are significant, I don’t know that if we waited, it would be less. Prices only seem to go up, never down,” she said.

No action was taken by the board on October 6, but the board’s October 13 meeting was to include a motion to authorize advertising that project for bids from interested parties, with a subsequent motion to award that project likely once bids are in, and the replacement project itself likely to start in spring, the manager said.

Upper Gwynedd’s commissioners next meet at 7 p.m. on Oct. 13 at the township administration building, 1 Parkside Place. For more information visit www.UpperGwynedd.org.

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