No Date Yet For W. Park Blvd. Bridge Completion

The ongoing renovation of the W. Park Boulevard bridge in Haddon Township still has no completion date, five months after it was scheduled to be done.

A Camden County official said on May 22 he expected to have a completion date for the Haddon Township project by the end of the week. But the rubble and chain-linked fence that was erected in September still blocks the two-lane bridge and detours traffic through small residential streets.

"It's an engineering issue now," said Dan Keashen, a county spokesman. "You won't see laborers out there doing any work until the engineers come up with a plan to fix the bridge."

The aging bridge at W. Park Boulevard and W. Walnut Street needed to be replaced. The initial project was supposed to be complete before Christmas. But a contractor's error in the proper mixture of concrete was discovered after it was poured.

Since then, engineers have been trying to decide if the structure can be fortified or if the concrete must be busted up and poured again.

Another factor in the delay is a PSE&G gas utility pipe that runs under the bridge. The company did not want to shut the pipe down as winter approached, when the delay first occurred. But the heating season was expected to be over by March. Keashen said PSE&G decided it needed the pipe to be active past March because of extended colder weather.

Keashen said he doesn't expect the county to incur additional cost for the $273,388 project because the contractor will pay for the delay. The general contractor is Schiavone and the concrete contractor is R.E. Pierson of Pilesgrove, he said.

Keashen said 10 cubic yards of concrete was poured on the bridge, but a computer error at Pierson was blamed for a mixture that did not meet the specifications.

"The sensitivity of the project dictates a lot of procedures be in place to catch bad material," Keashen said. "At the end of the day, we're moving forward."