Wichita city engineers signal plan to move forward with full Amidon bridge closure

City engineers plan to move forward with their initial decision to fully close the Amidon Avenue Bridge for at least 14 months to complete a $7.5 million replacement project.

Construction will likely begin in September on the four-lane bridge, which spans the Big Arkansas riverbend between 13th and 21st streets and is traversed by more than 16,500 vehicles a day.

The District 6 Advisory Board and Wichita City Council, both of which have previously approved the closure, will be asked to reaffirm their vote before plans are finalized.

Engineers considered several alternatives that would have preserved one or two lanes of through traffic while upping the project price tag and prolonging construction.

The bridge connects residential neighborhoods south of the bridge with key services at the 21st and Amidon intersection, including five grocery stores, four pharmacies, a DMV office, a fire station, a workforce center, two health care facilities and more than a dozen restaurants.

Options were reevaluated after area residents and business owners came forward with concerns about the economic and public safety implications of the disruption.

The city held a March 24 informational meeting about the bridge that was attended by roughly 100 people. Engineers went over options and listened to public input.

“We didn’t take a vote, but I’m confident that we heard generally, overall the belief that we should take this route, get the project started this fall, get it done with and get it over with,” Assistant Director of Public Works and Utilities Gary Janzen said.

Engineers say keeping one lane of traffic open throughout replacement of the aging bridge would increase the cost to $10.2 million and increase completion time to 23 months. Preserving a northbound and southbound lane of traffic would push the cost above $11 million and stretch the project to at least 25 months.

The city also considered a $4.2 million option for repairing the existing bridge while keeping two lanes open, but engineers say the rehabilitated bridge would still need to be replaced within 10 years.

Janzen said a full bridge closure is the only option that would allow construction to begin this fall.

“If we don’t close the bridge, it’s going to take us longer to complete the design and permitting, and we’ll have to wait a year and start next fall,” Janzen said.

He said upcoming bridge construction in the region, including work at the north junction and on east Kellogg, could make finding a willing contractor difficult if the project is postponed.

“We reached out and talked to our bridge contractors, and we have a belief that if we wait a year to bid, it’s quite likely that we won’t get any bids on the project, so that’s a problem,” Janzen said.

Emergency response and detours

One major worry residents voiced about the prospect of a full bridge closure was that it could drastically increase Wichita Fire Department response times by cutting off access to Wichita Firehouse 7, which sits just northeast of 21st and Amidon on Coolidge.

The city now plans to set up a temporary WFD satellite station on 13th Street that can accommodate an engine.

The fire department is considering several possible properties for the satellite location, which Janzen said he’s confident will be operational by September if the closure is finalized.

Sedgwick County EMS said construction would not affect their response times.

For motorists, the city is suggesting a detour route that sends vehicles east on 13th or 21st Street to Broadway before cutting back west to Amidon. In normal traffic, the proposed detour takes 10 minutes to drive, compared to 2 minutes from 13th to 21st over the bridge.

A westbound detour to West Street would take commuters nearly 6 minutes to drive and an eastbound detour to Waco would take nearly 8 minutes. Janzen said the Broadway detour is a practical one for most drivers.

“There’s going to be more traffic going towards the core of the city downtown and coming from that way than there would be from the west, especially because you don’t go too far west and a lot of the neighborhoods are cut off by I-235,” he said.

For people trying to access the businesses north of the bridge from 13th Street, the city plans to post signs along both West and Waco showing the way.

A city bus detour route from the residential neighborhoods south of the bridge will snake east on 13th, north up Meridian, back west across 17th to West and east on 21st.

This story was originally published May 4, 2022 at 4:25 AM.