Under The Bridge Downtown

By Ellyn Santiago

The issue with the Mystic River Bridge getting repeatedly stuck, has plenty of folks fuming. With project boss Brent Church, Patch got inside and under the bridge to see exactly what the issue is.

In a nutshell, the $17 million Mystic River Drawbridge rehabilitation project is at the mercy of a number of $200 limit switches that send a signal to the new “bridge brain that, hey, we don’t have contact.”

Previously run by an now-antiquated relay system (albeit one that is being used as backup), with the rehab comes a state-of-the-art system – the only one of its kind in Connecticut – “brains of the bridge now,” a programmable logic controller where the operator, today it was Butch, operates the bridge on the touch screen.

But the system is reliant upon a series of limit switches that, project manager Brent Church explained, “tell the computer that, ‘hey, that gate is functioning.”

What’s happened of late is there was “no contact with the lower flange of the bridge because of the heat which expanded the steel,” he said.

“It wasn’t touching, it wasn’t in contact with the lower flange and that sends a fault (message) to the computer system. In turn, the computer won’t allow the vehicular barrier gate to drop or the warning gates to open because it’s reading it as a safety issue,” he said.

But if the switch doesn’t make contact, and it hasn’t a few times of late because of extreme heat and swelled steel, and misses its mark …the bridge refuses to open

The fix? The plan is to do some re-wiring.

“We won’t get into this predicament like we did last week. We’re going to do a little upgraded wiring and hopefully this goes away.”

One of the complaints some have shared is the security barrier. But the feature Church said is a mandated by American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO). Some have argued it’s unnecessary since in the past 90 years no one has driven off the bridge. But the point is moot since the law requires it.