MILANVILLE, PA — A project to repair or replace the historic Skinners Falls Bridge has taken another step with the release of a report saying the bridge can be preserved. 

The Skinners Falls Bridge, a Baltimore truss bridge originally built in 1902 that connects Skinners Falls, NY and Milanville, closed in October 2019 after years of emergency repairs, closings and re-openings. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) has led the effort to determine whether the bridge should be repaired or replaced, with consultant AECOM preparing many of the project’s reports. 

The most recent release about the bridge, phase one of a Historic Bridge Rehabilitation Analysis (HRBA), examines whether it can be repaired in a way that preserves its historic character. 

The verdict? It can be done. And there are reasons why it should be. 

“What they found was that this bridge has historic significance—which I’m sure we all agree with—both from an exceptional historic standpoint as well as engineering,” said Laurie Ramie, executive director of the Upper Delaware Council (UDC). “Because, as stated, it’s rare to have an intact example of a Baltimore truss bridge.”

The UDC, a collaboration between the towns and townships along the Upper Delaware river, sits on the project advisory committee (PAC) for the bridge. Ramie briefed the council on the most recent meeting of the PAC at a June 1 UDC meeting. 

The project team presented three options for restoring the bridge, said Ramie, restoring it to a four-ton, a seven-ton and a 10-ton capacity respectively. 

The first two options had similar scale and cost; the 10-ton option had a longer projected life, and while it was more expensive, it was not significantly more work than the minimum option. 

Ramie’s takeaway from the report was that rehabilitation is a viable option, she told the UDC. “We’re halfway there.”

The will for rehabilitation

The UDC and other regional advocates have supported rehabilitation at every stage of PennDOT’s work on the bridge.

“The pin-connected Baltimore through truss design is historically and technologically significant, earning a November 14, 1988 designation to the National Register of Historic Places as one of only three such truss types among 135 highway bridges owned by PennDOT that had not been demolished as of 2019,” reads in part a UDC letter from 2021. 

PennDOT has not overtly expressed an opinion for or against rehabilitation: at this stage, the project team is considering all its options. 

While there isn’t an explicit preference, some advocates for the bridge’s preservation see an implicit one in PennDOT’s work. 

“The 2021 PennDOT/Wayne County/Damascus Township “survey” regarding the future of the bridge was singularly a traffic study—many people commented about that lack of cultural perspective at the time,” says Barbara Arrindell, director of Damascus Citizens for Sustainability. In Arrindell’s view, the survey was slanted toward replacing the bridge with one more suitable for big trucks. 

The maximum load that the current bridge can bear after rehabilitation is 10 tons. Project documents including a “purpose and need” document showed a need for up to 40-ton vehicles at that crossing, including emergency vehicles like fire trucks and ambulances. 

Ramie told the UDC that the project team is considering alternate ways to meet project needs, including installing dry hydrants for emergency services and the addition of walkways to the existing bridge for pedestrians. 

Even so, considering those alternatives isn’t the same as committing to them. 

The process for the Skinners Falls Bridge is just like what happened at Pond Eddy, said Nadia Rajsz, Town of Lumberland representative to the UDC. PennDOT replaced the historic Pond Eddy bridge with a similar new-build (with a 40-ton weight limit) after years of discussion, culminating in the 2018 destruction of the old bridge. 

The difference, Rajsz says, is in the bridge’s designation. The Pond Eddy bridge wasn’t on the National Registry of Historic Places, despite advocates’ attempts. The Skinners Falls Bridge is. 

“This analysis is what they had to do,” says Arrindell. “[With] no assumptions or leaving things out, [asking] what is wrong with the structure, can it be repaired without impacting (changing) its valuable historic character, what needs to be fixed and what will it cost?”

Project timelines

The HBRA document that PennDOT released in May is phase one of a two-phase report. 

In this first phase HBRA explored whether the bridge could be preserved, and the history that makes a case for its preservation. The second stage will explore whether a preserved bridge (and its weight limit) can meet the needs of a bridge at that location. It will also consider non-traditional alternatives for the project. 

PennDOT plans to hold a public meeting in 2024, Ramie told the UDC. The phase two HBRA study is scheduled to be released some time in the winter of 2024-25. 

That timeline will make over five years of studies since the bridge’s closure without a clear idea of what option will be ultimately be chosen: repair or replace. 

With all the time and money spent on analysis, PennDOT could have rehabilitated the bridge for 50 years, said Ginny Dudko, Town of Deerpark representative to the UDC. 

Ramie responded with the numbers from the past four years of analysis: $200,000 was spent in 2020, $400,000 in 2021, $2,000,000 in 2022 and $1,092,500 in 2023. 

“Generally, all projects have unique challenges that impact the project delivery process,” the AECOM project team told the River Reporter. “Unique challenges for this project include the historical significance of the bridge and the presence of a federally recognized Wild and Scenic River.

“In consideration of those factors, PennDOT and NYSDOT are undertaking the Planning and Environmental Linkages Study (PEL) process for the bridge. This process ensures that the local community and stakeholders are heard from early (and often) during the planning phase and streamlines the development of solutions. The project is generally on schedule, per the timeline developed for the PEL Study, and the timeline for this project is similar to others of the same complexity.”

Historic details

The phase-one HRBA document is available on the project website at bit.ly/SkinnersFallsBridge; scroll down to the section labeled “Section 106 and Consulting Parties” and click the link in that paragraph. 

The purpose of the report, as stated in the introduction, is “to determine whether the historic Skinners Falls Bridge can be rehabilitated without altering the character defining features that qualify the bridge for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.” 

The minimum rehabilitation requirements include replacement of the bridge’s wooden deck, replacement of the truss members and pins holding the bridge together and improvements to the substructure of the bridge. Replacement parts to fulfill those requirements can be similar to or the same as the existing parts, so this option could preserve the bridge’s historic character. 

The minimum requirements would restore the bridge to a four-ton weight limit. The seven-ton alternative replaces an additional three percent of truss members, up to 18 percent; and the 10-ton option repairs or replaces around 35 percent of truss members. 

The report notes that the 10-ton option “does not include significantly more work than the minimum rehabilitation option,” while increasing the bridge’s structural capacity and lifespan. 

The four- and seven-ton options both cost approximately $15.6 million and have a 10- to 15-year lifespan. The 10-ton option costs approximately $17.3 million and has a 25-year lifespan.