A report on the "summit" from the September 19th Southeast Missourian follows the original story below...

Cairo, Ill., bridges will be focus of meeting

By Scott Welton

SIKESTON — Sikeston officials are hoping for a big crowd at Tuesday’s bridge summit.

“We want to have a good turnout from our area because we want to show our legislators that this is very important to us,” said Mayor Mike Marshall. The meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Clinton Community Building.

City officials have invited both state and federal legislators from Missouri to the event along with Kentucky officials to open a discussion on replacing the bridge on U.S. Route 60/62 which connects Birds Point, Mo., with Cairo, Ill., over the Mississippi River and the bridge on U.S. Route 51/60 over the Ohio River connecting Cairo with Kentucky.

Following the collapse of the Mississippi River bridge on Interstate 35 West at Minneapolis, Marshall called for a public discussion on the need to replace the aged, narrow bridges at Cairo for safety reasons.

“According to sufficiency reports on the bridges, our Mississippi River bridge at Cairo is ranked at the top of the list for the most insufficient,” Marshall said.

The Cairo bridge over the Mississippi, a truss bridge with a 20-foot wide deck, was built in 1929. The bridge over the Ohio River, built in 1937, is also a truss bridge with a 20-foot wide deck. While both are included on the Historic Bridges of the U.S. Web site, they are listed as being “functionally obsolete.”

The standard lane width for interstate highways is 12 feet. During the last regular Sikeston City Council meeting Sept. 4, several anecdotes were related about truck drivers losing side view mirrors to oncoming traffic or bridge trusses while crossing these Cairo bridges as well as company policies requiring truck drivers to use alternate routes for safety reasons.

Not all companies are willing to send their drivers that far out of their way, however.

“I had the opportunity to ride from Cape Girardeau to Cairo on the Corps of Engineers’ boat,” Marshall said. “As we went down that way, we crossed under both bridges.”

Marshall said from that perspective, he noticed how many tractor-trailer trucks travel over those two bridges. “The trucks were going by like ants, one after another, a steady flow,” he said.

Approximately 6,000 vehicles cross the bridge between Kentucky and Illinois on an average day, according to a recent Kentucky Transportation Cabinet press release.

The KYTC and Illinois Department of Transportation conducted their annual joint inspection of the bridge connecting Kentucky and Illinois over the Ohio River Thursday. The inspection reportedly included walking the deck and making ground observations from beneath the bridge structure.

As of presstime, KYTC officials could not be reached for comment on the inspection. Todd Ahrens, head of planning for the Illinois Department of Transportation, said although the states split the costs of maintenance on the bridge, it is maintained by Kentucky “so they are responsible for the inspection and the reporting of inspections.”

Representatives from Kentucky have indicated they will attend and speak during the bridge summit in Sikeston, according to city officials.

Ahrens said a similar joint inspection with IDOT and Missouri Department of Transportation officials on the bridge crossing the Mississippi is slated for this week.

KYTC officials plan to close the Kentucky-Illinois Ohio River bridge from 9 p.m. still 4:30 a.m. for several days beginning as early as Friday to help the contractor complete ongoing maintenance work on the structure several weeks ahead of schedule, weather permitting, and allow two-line traffic to be restored.

The work reportedly includes touch-up painting on the bridge superstructure and an overall quality assurance inspection of the maintenance and painting.

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On the Net: Historic Bridges of the U.S.: http://bridgehunter.com

Sikeston mayor seeks new bridge

By Peg McNichol ~ Southeast Missourian

SIKESTON, Mo. -- The crowd of more 130 people gathered at the Clinton Community Building in Sikeston on Tuesday had a single purpose: to get a new bridge.

Sikeston Mayor Mike Marshall called the meeting a bridge summit. He wants to see a new bridge between Missouri and Kentucky.

He called the current bridges nearest Sikeston, on highways 60 and 51 and which connect Missouri and Kentucky through Cairo, Ill., "old, extremely narrow and dangerously unsafe." Among those who attended were government officials from Missouri and Kentucky, business owners, truck drivers, other private citizens and U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson's chief of staff, Lloyd Smith.

"I fully support a new bridge that will connect Southeast Missouri, Southern Illinois and western Kentucky primarily because of safety concerns but also the benefits that this improvement will have for business and commerce for years to come," Smith told the crowd.

Speaker after speaker said the same, some suggesting a new bridge would be a natural route for an interstate. Every speaker drew applause.

Kentucky's transportation officials weren't at the meeting, said Keith Todd, spokesman for Kentucky Department of Highways districts 1 and 2, because "we are mandated by the legislature to follow the six-year road plan, so we are legislatively driven as opposed to being engineering driven."

But Todd took exception to claims the bridge was dangerous. "There's still a lot of safe left in that bridge," he said by phone Tuesday.

Mark Shelton, district engineer with the Missouri Department of Transportation, attended the meeting and was also troubled by the claims, which have been fueled by the fact the bridge from Mississippi County, Mo., to Alexander County, Ill., has a sufficiency rating of 18.6 percent out of a possible 100 and the Cairo-Wickliffe bridge over the Ohio is rated at 20.1 percent.

Donnie Brown, New Madrid County highway engineer and mayor of New Madrid, said the bridge's sufficiency rating was not likely to rise.

"If we start today, we've got five years of studies," he said, referring to the time needed for fund raising, feasibility studies, land acquisition and design work.

"Do you want to take your family over that bridge when the number is 10?" he said.

After the meeting, Shelton said the Cairo-Wickliffe bridge received a safety rating of six, out of a possible nine, during a thorough inspection last year and that from a structural standpoint it "is in no danger of collapsing."

He said sufficiency ratings measured such categories as condition, traffic count, width and approach.

"It's a 20-foot-wide bridge with curves at each end," he said, adding that such a bridge would not be built today. But he said applying current standards to older bridges was akin to evaluating a working 1975-era pickup truck by the standards of a new model.

Representatives from three businesses -- Noranda, Burch Foods and Pullen Trucking Co. -- said they wanted a new bridge for safety reasons.

Marshall ended the meeting by saying "I'm going to tell you one thing: I'm going to get us a new bridge."

Of those who attended, two dozen signed up to create an action plan.