By Brian Trompeter
It’s been several years since the pedestrian bridge linking the Freeman Store & Museum in Vienna with the Washington & Old Dominion (W&OD) Regional Trail collapsed, and town officials are hopeful that a long-delayed replacement bridge will be installed soon.
The Vienna Town Council in January 2022 awarded a contract to Franco’s Liberty Bridge Inc. of Clinton, Md. to build a replacement bridge, but construction still hasn’t taken place. After a six-to-eight-month wait, the town on Aug. 18 received the final required Fairfax County permit and the project is ready to begin, said Andrew Jinks, transportation engineer for the Vienna Department of Public Works.
“There were numerous factors that were causing things to go through slowly,” Jinks said of the county permitting process. “The contractor has actually been on site assessing the situation and done some additional clearing, since so many months have passed.”
The contract’s price of $252,732, which includes a 10-percent contingency allowance, remains the same, but there will need to be a few small change orders owing to minor design adjustments for the bridge’s structure, which were required by county officials, Jinks said.
Because of those design changes, town officials do not yet have a firm idea of when the project will be completed, he said.
“But when they get started, once they pour the concrete for the footers, they can start with the actual bridge work” after the concrete cures, Jinks said. “It will move quickly.”
Like town residents desiring to install decks on their homes, Vienna officials had to apply to Fairfax County for permits pertaining to the bridge project, Jinks said. Town officials also coordinated with the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority (NOVA Parks), which operates the W&OD Trail, on aspects of the bridge project that would occur within that agency’s right-of-way.
In addition, the town government worked with the Virginia Department of Transportation, which is administering the federal Transportation Alternative (TA) funds used to finance the bridge project. Vienna had to seek a second round of funding for the initiative because its price increased, Jinks said.
“With the fact that it’s being funded through VDOT and it’s dealing with these federal TA funds, we do have a lot of checked boxes we have to hit during the construction process,” he said.
The bridge – designed by Whitman, Requardt & Associates LLP – will be mostly made from treated lumber, with steel beams connecting it to concrete abutments below, Jinks said. The span crosses a creek directly west of the Freeman Store & Museum.
The span will be about 46 feet 9 inches long and 5 feet 3 inches wide and connect with a traverse section measuring 23 feet 8 inches by 5 feet 9 inches, which will abut the Freeman Store’s west side.
The project likely will not affect Freeman Store access, but the W&OD Trail at times will need to be detoured during part of the bridge’s construction, Jinks said.
The most recent contract marks the third attempt by town officials to replace the bridge. The first attempt drew no bidders, as contractors were highly in demand then, and the second try failed when the price of treated lumber rose precipitously. Vienna officials were able to trim the project’s cost somewhat by having town staff perform some of the required work, especially near the Freeman Store.
Anne Stuntz, president of Historic Vienna Inc., which operates the Freeman Store & Museum, said she is “happy and relieved” that the bridge replacement is finally under way.
“The Freeman Store, originally called Lydeckers Store, was built next to the then-new railroad in 1859 and a bridge connected it with the road since the beginning, even before the depot was built,” she said. “It’s exciting to have the historic link rebuilt. And even more important is that we will again be accessible to wheelchair users.”
