Dangerous bridge
LITTLE ELM — A Denton County bridge has some serious problems.
An inspection shows the two-lane Eldorado Parkway bridge over Lewisville Lake has cracks and missing concrete.
As a result, the Little Elm school district has been forced to radically change bus routes to avoid the potentially dangerous span.
The Texas Department of Transportation asked the school district to keep buses off the bridge. A routine inspection done a few weeks ago found an assortment of problems.
News 8 took a boat ride to document the bridge's shortcomings. We saw cracks on seven different cross-beams supporting the pavement. We also saw several missing chunks of concrete, which in many cases, expose steel reinforcement bars.
Students who attend middle and high schools had been traveling across the bridge in buses every day to get to school.
“More than a third of our school district on the western portion has to travel across that bridge to come to our schools,” said Little Elm ISD spokeswoman Julie Zwahr.
The district had to change school bus routes in less than 24 hours. “We basically had to start from scratch and implement — in a very short time frame — all of the school bus transportation,” Zwahr said.
The change means that the 1.5 mile trip from the western end of the bridge to Colin Powell Middle School is now an 18-mile, 30-minute odyssey around Lewisville Lake.
The weight limit on the bridge have been slashed from 21,000 lbs. to 6,000 lbs. That means heavy trucks are no longer allowed to travel on it. But in a 30-minute period, News 8 observed at least three big rigs doing just that.
Department of Public Safety troopers are responsible for enforcing weight restrictions on the bridge.
TxDOT will make temporary repairs, but that could take three months. Construction on a new bridge should start this summer.
“They’re doing all this work around here. I'm sure they're aware of it. So I'm sure they'll address it and get it fixed,” said Jeff Crone, a Little Elm parent.
Little Elm Fire Department Chief Joe Florentino said city fire trucks and ambulances will still be allowed to cross the weakened bridge, but only in emergency situations.
Once the repairs are complete, the weight restrictions should return to normal.
E-mail sstoler@wfaa.com
