9-Month Wire Road Detour Starts Monday

Residents who travel Wire Road between Bedford and Merrimack should plan for a new course of travel for the next nine months.

Starting Monday, Nov. 12, through traffic between the Bedford Road intersection and the Bedford town line will be closed in order to begin the replacement of the Wire Road Bridge over Baboosic Brook.

It's a project that has to be done, Kyle Fox told abutters last summer when the town invited residents in the affected area to discuss the project. Fox is the Merrimack Public Works deputy director and town engineer.

The $832,000 replacement project is part of the state's bridge replacement program, meaning that the town will be reimbursed 80 percent of the cost of the project. The money was encumbered at town meeting in 2011 and, when all is said and done, it will be responsible for only $166,400 of the more than $800,000 project.

“There are issues with the bridge,” Fox said in a phone interview Thursday.

Primarily, 17-foot corrugated metal culvert that runs under the bridge is eroding and putting the bridge at risk for failure, Fox said. Additionally, he said the reconstruction of the bridge and 775 feet of roadway will help prevent road flooding in that area during future flood events that may occur.

During major flood events in Merrimack in 2005 and 2006, that area of Wire Road was closed when Baboosic Brook rushed over the road when the culvert couldn't handle the amount of water coming downstream.

The new bridge will eliminate the use of the metal culvert and replace it with a pre-cast concrete bridge that will increase the pass through under if from 17 feet to 62 feet.

Also part of the project is reconstruction of the road on each side of the bridge to raise the height of the road by about 6 inches, which will also help discourage flooding there, Fox said.

When the project is complete, the bridge will be built to standards for a 100-year storm. The state only requires bridges to be built to handle a 50-year storm.

During the meeting in June 2011, Fox told residents that there is a reason the bridge makes the state's list of endangered bridges.

"We don't know when the bridge is going to fail, we just know it's going to fail," he told abutters, who were not warmed to the idea of a months-long road closure.

More than a year later, Fox said some of the abutters have become supportive of the project but there are some still aren't very receptive to the project.

The brige replacement was originally in the works for last fall, but Fox said Thursday that it was delayed for a few reasons, including negotiating easements with five abutters. He said they also had to coordinate with the Town of Bedford, which recently finished it's own bridge replacement on Jenkins Road (Bedford Road in Merrimack), which is on the detour route for this project. That project was scheduled to be done Nov. 5 and was actually completed early and Jenkins Road re-opened about a month ago.

While the detour around the closure starts at the intersection with Bedford Road, the road closure is officially at the intersection with Bryant Circle and the Bedford Town Line. The project is being completed by R. M. Piper of Plymouth.

Fox said people who want to see updates and progress on the project should “Like” the Merrimack Public Works Facebook Page.