By Brett Yates
Over the next three summers, the Vermont Agency of Transportation expects to replace five state-owned bridges in Plymouth and one in Bridgewater, necessitating closures on Route 100 and Route 100A.
Accelerated Bridge Program Manager Rob Young, who presented the plan to the Plymouth Select Board on Monday, Nov. 18, said VTrans will use “emergency funds” to upgrade infrastructure deemed inadequate after the July 2023 flooding. The bridges in question cross Pinney Hollow Brook, Reservoir Brook, Tinker Brook, and Money Brook.
“These projects aren’t really at the end of their design life, but because they are constricting the channels, they weren’t constructed with the best hydraulics in mind at the time,” Young said. “We’re going to go ahead and replace those structures.”
Construction is set to begin next April, albeit without any road closures “until school is out for the summer.”
Bridge 9 on Route 100A will come first. VTrans will work on Route 100’s Bridge 112 and Bridge 116 in 2026, moving on to Route 100A’s Bridge 4 and Bridge 7 in 2027, as well as Route 100’s Bridge 108.
Rick Martin, the owner of Chloe’s Market (formerly the Plymouth Country Store), voiced concerns about the forthcoming detours at the Select Board meeting.
“This is crazy,” Martin said. “You do this thing, and it’s going to affect my sales immensely. People aren’t going to travel around to come to the store.”
According to the state’s description, Vermont’s Accelerated Bridge Program “makes use of prefabricated elements” that can “be quickly installed with minimal impact to the traveling public.”
Using this method, the smallest of the six projects will take an estimated one to two weeks. But VTrans projects a closure of 45 to 60 days for the largest of them, Bridge 116, just north of Plymouth’s town line.
In West Bridgewater, a new 63-foot bridge will replace a circa-2023 temporary span. The job will include what Project Manager Gary Laroche called “some pretty major stream realignment and construction” to create “a more resilient and maintainable stream in the future.”
