Athens officials are considering building a new pedestrian and bicycle bridge over the Hocking River, but the plans could come falling down if a grant fails to hand the city enough money.
Athens officials are weighing the options of connecting a bike path near Armitage Road to a patch of land on the other side of the river. The bridge, with an estimated price tag shy of $900,000, would be able to accommodate only pedestrian and bicycle traffic.
But the city might be able to build the bridge at a significantly lower price tag if it is awarded an $800,000 grant from the Ohio Department of Transportation, leaving taxpayers to foot the remaining $100,000 of the bill.
An official application for the grant was submitted May 1, but the final amount the city receives won’t be finalized until June, said Andy Stone, director of Engineering and Public Works.
“We may not receive the full amount we’ve requested, but we would need at least $500,000 in grant money to move forward with the project,” he said.
The bulk of the cost comes from utilizing an outside contractor to complete the project, Stone said.
“We could defray some of the cost doing it with our own forces, but building (a bridge) across the Hocking is beyond our capabilities,” he said. “We’d need an outside contractor.”
The city’s street and capital improvement funds could be sources of revenue for the portion of the project paid by the city, but that would likely depend on other commitments the city has in the year the construction would take place, Stone said.
The bridge should help citizens travel within the city, Mayor Paul Wiehl said, adding that Athens Police would be able to take some of their smaller vehicles, similar to golf carts, across the bridge.
“People look at biking like it’s recreation, but let’s look at it as a mode of transportation,” he said. “The city needs to be connected so people could do what they want to do.”
With the project slated to begin sometime in 2015, the city would be able to make only rough projections about how spending would be appropriated, Wiehl said.
“(Plans are) pretty far down the path,” he said. “This is all dreaming stuff.”
Still, Athens City Council passed an ordinance May 7 that would allow Wiehl to acquire bike path funds through the ODOT for the project.
“It’s expensive to build a bridge,” Council President Jim Sands said. “The city would not be spending a million dollars of its own, but it’s unknown how the money would be
appropriated.”
Though expensive, the project would be justified because the city adopted the Bikers and Pedestrian plan in 2010, which stated that the Columbus Road area ought to be made more accessible, Sands said.
“This would be a way for bike traffic to come and go from the Columbus road area,” he said.
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