Building a $300,000 two-lane bridge to serve a one-lane dirt road that has nobody living on it at all makes no sense at all, Scioto County resident Bob Morton said of the Knapp Road bridge, which crosses Pine Creek off Township Road 341 in Vernon Township.

“It’s a bridge to nowhere,” said Morton, who lives east of Ashley Corner, six or seven miles from Knapp Road. “And the road loops and there’s a bridge coming in on the other end, so if anybody moved in there they still have a way in and out. I’d say there’s hundreds of people in the county who could use a good bridge like that.”

The area he lives in is served by a one-lane bridge.

Scioto County Engineer Craig Opperman talked with Morton earlier this week and explained why the bridge is being built and why it is an “economically feasible project.”

First of all, he said, the new bridge, a steel truss bridge, nearing completion by U.S. Steel Co., is a replacement for the one that was there. A storm that hit Aug. 3 washed the old bridge out. It had been there since 1937.

“We got a call in the middle of the night from a resident telling us the bridge was gone. We had to send somebody out there to shut the road down,” Opperman said.

“We have to replace bridges where they fall. We can’t close a road down and move the bridge somewhere else. We’re not in the business of buying property.”

He said the two bridges serve seven property owners, including Wayne National Forest, which owns several hundred acres in the area.

There are two houses. One is a two-story that is empty. The other, Opperman believed, was bought by the forest service.

The bridge on the other end of Knapp Road has a 16-ton weight limit, meaning that fire trucks, concrete trucks and other heavy vehicles could not cross it. There will be no weight restrictions on the new bridge.

“In order to get materials in to the far side of the new bridge, we had to lay the metal sheeting for the decking in the creek and pull it across, and we had to pump cement across,” he said. “If there should be a wildfire in the forest, you wouldn’t be able to bring fire trucks across that bridge to fight it.”

He said the replacement bridge on Knapp Road is being built on a grant, with the Ohio Public Works Commission paying 80 percent of the cost and the county 20 percent.

Also, the Knapp Road bridge is one of the bridges the county has built that earns credit toward the percentage the county must pay on projects.

Scioto County, he said, participates in the Federal Highway and Ohio Department of Transportation’s Credit Bridge Program. It allows the county to earn bridge credit toward providing funding for the Hayport Road Bridge Replacement Project, bridge load ratings, and future bridge projects.

“Scioto County was the pilot agency to initiate the process in the State of Ohio to allow credits to be earned on force account work performed by Scioto County employees and contractors in order to obtain credits toward federally funded projects,” Opperman said. “Three County Engineer employee- (force account) built projects (Carey’s Run Road, Miller’s Run-Fallen Timber Road and Sheldon-Cartro Road) and five contract projects (Sedan Crabtree Road, Dever Road, Henley-Deemer Road, Disterdick Lane and Knapp Road) were used to obtain the credit.

“The way it works is that we build our force account bridges and contractor bridges to meet federal and state requirements and we will receive a credit of 80 percent on the total project costs to apply as our share of a future federally funded bridge.

“The eight credit bridge projects cost a total of around $1,727,500, which will earn a credit of $1,382,000. Of this $1,727,500, a total of $1,046,863 was paid for through several grants.

“This credit will be allowed to be used to pay $581,255 of our estimated total cost of $775,005.78 due from the county for the Hayport Road project. What’s left will be banked for other bridge projects.

“This will result in the Hayport Road construction costing the Scioto County Engineer’s Office only $193,750 for this $3.8 million project. This is providing us all a great savings from our budget, thereby freeing up funds for other improvement for Scioto County.”

Morton said he still thinks spending that much on the Knapp Road bridge is a mistake.

“Nobody can convince me it’s a good idea,” he said. “Rules like that don’t make sense to me. You see the location of this bridge —a bridge 24-feet wide — on a country lane serving no houses...”

G. SAM PIATT can be reached at 740) 353-3101, ext. 236.