City Council To Consider Bridge Proposal

Tuesday night, the Sacramento City Council will be asked to approve the plans for a new bridge at Sacramento City College.

The bridge would be only 250-feet long. The ramps to get to it would be 950 feet long.  

Ofelia Avalos is an engineer for the Sacramento Public Works Department. She says the ramps are needed to increase access over Union Pacific tracks.

"Currently the Sutterville Crossing is a three-foot sidewalk, so it's recently hard for pedestrians to cross each other on the same sidewalk. And this bridge will provide a nice pedestrian walkway for bikes and pets to get across."

The project is not without controversy. A local contractor's winning bid was challenged. The City says the challenge was without merit.  But, if the Council decides to re-bid the project, the City says it could miss a federally-imposed deadline and $6.9 million in federal funds.  

If the council approves the bid and the project, construction would begin in November.

Avalos says the bridge must be assembled on site.

 "A huge forklift will come in and we'll pick it up and it will place it onto the columns. That's gonna be a big task to place everything. Every bolt and every hole has to be in a perfect place for this to all work."

The bridge will be a "tied-arch bridge" and will be only the second one of its kind in California. 

The project has a completion date set for the end of next year.