Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
Workers still were putting the finishing touches last week on the new U.S. 54 bridge at Logan. The bridge is scheduled to open to traffic late in the morning of June 23.
After years of construction, the new U.S. 54 bridge at Logan will open to traffic June 23 after a morning ceremony to celebrate its completion, according to a state official contacted by the Quay County Sun.
A ribbon-cutting will take place at 10 a.m. June 23 at one side of the bridge, according to an emailed invitation Monday from District 4 of the New Mexico Department of Transportation.
The opening of the bridge originally had been scheduled for June 18, but recent heavy rains in the region damaged riprap near the bridge, requiring extra days to repair it.
The 700-foot-long bridge originally was forecast to cost $20.3 million. NMDOT spokesman Travis Martinez stated in an email last week the final price was $23.5 million.
The project's official start date was Nov. 3, 2018, with a projected construction time of 500 days. It originally was slated to be finished in August 2020, then October 2020.
Construction encountered delays and cost increases because of work-change orders, mostly because of a saltwater aquifer found at the work site necessitated a redesign of the bridge's piers, Martinez stated.
Fisher Sand and Gravel of Placitas was the general contractor for the bridge.
NMDOT originally announced the bridge project in December 2013. Construction initially was slated for 2017 and 2018, but those bids came in too high for the job, forcing the agency to announce a rebid on the project.
The new bridge over the Canadian River gorge is situated east of the current bridge, built in 1954.
The old deck truss bridge was rehabilitated in 1984. Its overall condition was rated as "poor" and had a sufficiency rating of just 38.9 out of 100 during its last inspection in September 2018.
According to NMDOT data from 2017, the latest information available, U.S. 54 averaged between 3,000 and 8,000 vehicles a day from Tucumcari to Nara Visa in Quay County.
U.S. 54 remains a vital link in Quay County between Wichita, Kansas, the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles and El Paso, Texas.
