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Old Bridge Gets a Coat of Paint
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Folks in La Grange got their first glimpse in months of the old river bridge across the Colorado River on Travis St. Workers recently removed a big section of the giant tarp that has been covering it while paint work was underway. Photo by Andy Behlen
A portion of the big tarp covering the old Colorado River bridge on Travis St. (SH 71-Business) came off last week.
Workers rehabilitating the bridge are painting it with a coat of primer. Lucea’n Kuykendall, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), said the final coat of paint will be applied after the new concrete deck is installed.
“Final paint color will be very close to the previous color,” Kuykendall said.
The new bridge is carrying traffic in both directions while work continues on the old bridge. Once complete, each bridge will be one-way only, with westbound traffic on the old bridge and eastbound traffic on the new bridge.
Some residents have questioned the need for two twolane bridges, since the highway is two-lane on both sides of the river.
Kuykendall explained Tx-DOT’s reason for the design configuration.
“Once in final configuration each bridge will only carry one lane of traffic,” she said. “The main reason was the truss bridge was too narrow to meet current design standards for two lanes of traffic. Having two bridges also allows for redundancy and allows us to keep Business 71 open while the necessary repairs to the truss bridge could be completed.”
The bridge work is scheduled for completion in February of next year.