Running low on options to stop truck drivers from striking the Olive Road Bridge, Augusta commissioners hope Google can help.
A motion to inform Google, Apple and Waze about the 10-foot, six-inch clearance of the railroad bridge passed the city Engineering Services committee Tuesday.
Countless drivers have hit the Olive Road bridge since vehicles got tall enough to reach it. Until 1985, it was only nine feet. The bridge is the property of CSX, and the railroad company had a train on its tracks Tuesday.
Commissioner Wayne Guilfoyle brought in newspaper clippings about how cities have dealt with low bridges. Pensacola, Fla. officials said a state representative was able to get the Graffiti Bridge marked in GPS by designating it a no-truck corridor.
San Antonio and Kansas City installed a height “curtain” the height of their low bridge. Durham, N.C. put up a traffic light that stays red if a truck is too tall. Guilfoyle said Augusta should implement a curtain.
The last straw would be fining motorists who ignore the warnings and hit the bridge, he said.
“At that moment, it costs us resources, as far as our fire department, our sheriff department to reroute (traffic) as well as our engineering department,” he said.
Commissioner Alvin Mason said Augusta was nearly out of options. “At the end of the day, we can’t legislate common sense,” he said.
Augusta Traffic Engineer John Ussery helped devise the current system of speed humps, LED stop signs and detours intended to reduce crashes at the bridge in 2019. While the changes stopped crashes for about a year, their effect has worn thin, he said. The last crash was about three weeks ago.
Ussery said for now, any vehicle impact becomes the railroad’s problem. If Augusta was to install a height curtain, for instance, it might damage vehicles as well.
“They would want us to fix it,” he said.
The railroad can’t raise the tracks, Ussery said, because it would require raising thousands of feet of tracks to create a gradual slope at the bridge.
Another option is closing the road. Ussery said the bridge is closed to traffic each Masters Week to avoid the additional hassle of tourists striking it. But permanently closing it would add a two-mile detour for poeple living on the north side of the bridge, the Heard Avenue section, and life-saving minutes to emergency response times.
Commissioner Jordan Johnson said he’d like to restart conversations with CSX about the bridge, something he said might need help at the federal level from an elected official.
“This is their (CSX’s) issue that’s causing issues for our community. It’s their responsibility,” he said.
In other action Tuesday, a commission committee approved the annual state contract to house state inmates at the Richmond County Correctional Institution. The state pays Augusta $22 per day per inmate to house them at the Tobacco Road facility, which is being rebuilt. The rate is up $2 from 2019, when it was $20, Warden Evan Joseph said.
