14-02-2025
Bridge, causeway lighting project set to begin in March
Feb. 14—The city finally has a date, in less than a month, for the Hudson Memorial Bridge/U.S. 31 causeway lighting project to begin.
City Engineer Carl Prewitt on Thursday said Shoals Electric expects to begin the $1 million project during the second week of March.
The project includes replacing the lights, starting at Market Street Northeast on the south end of the Hudson Memorial Bridge and stretching half a mile to a point just north of Riverwalk Marina. The project does not include the northernmost portion of the causeway.
"The completion date on the contract is for up to 60 days, but they tell us they don't think it will take that long," Prewitt said. "They expect the work to take about a month."
Prewitt said he does not yet know what lane disruptions the work will cause.
Shoals Electric won the project contract in June, but the contractor has been waiting months for materials.
"This has taken forever, so I'm glad to see we've got a date," Mayor Tab Bowling said.
Dewayne Hellums, director of the Decatur-area Metropolitan Planning Organization, said the MPO is contributing $814,978 in carbon-reduction funds to the project, and this requires a city match of $203,745.
The existing lights, installed more than 25 years ago, are not working due to rodents chewing on the wiring. Bowling said the city hired Cook's Pest Control to fight the problem.
"The rodents were eating the copper in the wires to sharpen their teeth," Bowling said.
The city hired AECOM, an infrastructure consulting firm, to handle the project's engineering in 2022. The plan is to replace the conduit, wiring and some of the junctions.
The city also plans to use pull boxes for the replaced junctions. Pull boxes used in conjunction with conduits will make wire installation easier. The boxes are designed to also help keep rodents away from the wiring.
City officials have not been happy with the Alabama Department of Transportation because, they said, the state refuses to contribute funding to the lighting project. In July, Councilman Billy Jackson was the one "no" vote for this reason.
"I think all of us here understand we need lighting on that bridge," Jackson said at the time. "But I've always felt this is a state highway; it's a state project that should be funded by the state of Alabama. This is not our responsibility per se."
The 78 pole lights along the bridges and causeway were installed in 1998 by the Alabama Department of Transportation and the city took over responsibility for maintenance. From 2002 until 2020, DU maintained the lights, charging the city for its time and materials.
On Feb. 1, 2020, an accident seriously injured four DU workers at the north end of the southbound bridge. The driver of a Chevrolet Silverado plowed into DU pickups which in turn collided with a boom truck. Two of the workers were ejected from the boom bucket, and two others were injured at street level. All four were there to work on the bridge lights.
Soon thereafter, DU General Manager Ray Hardin advised the city that the utility would no longer maintain the lights "due to safety concerns for our employees and the increasing maintenance requirements of obsolete facilities."
Decatur Development Director Dane Shaw on Thursday said a private contractor will be hired to do maintenance on the new lighting.
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