Seven years of frustration over the closed Cline Avenue bridge in East Chicago bubbled to the surface at a regional meeting.
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Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. contended that the Indiana Department of Transportation has shrugged off responsibility for seeing that the bridge — closed in November 2009 when INDOT determined it was unsafe — is replaced.
“It’s frustrating to me,” McDermott said at Thursday’s Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission meeting. “When we talk to INDOT, they say, ‘Not my problem.’ There’s not even a plan on the table.”
The 35,000 cars and trucks a day that formerly used that 1.25-mile section of Cline Avenue travel now along local streets in East Chicago, Hammond and Gary, McDermott said.
“There’s no money coming to fix the local roads, either,” East Chicago Mayor Anthony Copeland added.
Rick Powers, commissioner of the INDOT district covering Northwest Indiana, said a private company has the responsibility for building a new bridge.
“That stretch of road is private,” he said after the meeting. “It’s been relinquished (by the state).”
In July 2013, after the defective bridge was demolished, INDOT and Copeland signed an agreement transferring the bridge land to a company, Cline Avenue Bridge LLC. Florida-based Figg Bridge Builders is to build a new toll bridge.
NIRPC staffer Mitch Barloga said he recently met someone from Figg and will try to get them to the next NIRPC meeting to answer questions.
“It’s a travesty,” McDermott said of the bridge-building delay. “It’s beating up my city. “
Also at the NIRPC meeting:
*The commission approved the results of a two-year study on improving Northwest Indiana transportation by filling in gaps along major roads.
For example, Cline Avenue has interchanges with the Indiana Toll Road and Interstate 80/94 but doesn’t run continuously to U.S. 30.
NIRPC staffers led analyzed missing links along 22 roads in the three-county region that, if filled in, could be “a shortcut to solving congestion and connectivity,” Planning Manager Eman Ibrahim said. The study ranked the road links by their ability to reduce traffic congestion with minimal environmental damage.
Most of the missing road links were in Lake County.
The five top-ranked road links were Main Street, from Sheffield Avenue to Joe Orr Road in Illinois; Cline Avenue, from Main Street to Avenue D; Willowcreek Road, from County Road 700 North to U.S. 30; Burr Street, from Ridge Road to 65th Avenue; and Kennedy Avenue, from Junction Avenue to U.S. 30.
Planning work has started already on some of those segments, Ibrahim said. And now that NIRPC has approved the study’s report, those plans are eligible for future federal funding.
The report is on NIRPC’s web site, www.nirpc.org, under “plans.”
*Michael Griffin, Highland’s clerk-treasurer, was elected NIRPC’s chairman for the coming year, Beverly Shores Town Council member Geof Benson will be vice chairman.
Tim Zorn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
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