Hinsdale NH Route 119 Bridges Abandoned By NHDOT and Concord

It is interesting to think if the discovery and the 10 year plan were structured to come out together? I think discovery was withheld until the plan came out and I am grateful.

I got about a 5% confidence factor that the 10 year plan has any meaning at all.

Probably got a 65% confidence factor the bridge will be shut down or weight restricted by 2022...got a 75% confidence factor the bridge construction will be significantly delayed past 2022.

I got this a little while ago. So now it is on to the worthless legislators and governor...

*** SELECT 10YR PLAN PROJECTS: Monadnock Region & Western NH *** 

Hinsdale Bridge Replacement – Added back into the plan, for preliminary engineering work beginning in 2016 and construction in 2021-2022.

I got the feeling they are spending $500 dollars of bureaucrat money to save $30 bucks to shut off one bridge light. Like to know what is the KW cost of electricity between Hinsdale, the NHDOT and the ratepayers cost.

It is the same old thing with the weak kneed NH Democrats. We put them in the governorship and give them the house, once they owned everything...and they didn't use their power to contest the ideology of the republican extremist or neutralize them.  Can't tell them apart...can't even see them.

New Hampshire shuts off Arch Bridge lights to save money

BELLOWS FALLS -- Village residents heading to Walpole, N.H., may notice their trip across the Arch Bridge is much less illuminated than it used to be.

That's because the New Hampshire Department of Transportation is shutting off what it calls non-essential lights on state-maintained roads in response to severe budget limitations. Bill Boynton, the public information officer with NHDOT, told the Reformer this process started about two years ago as a cost-saving measure.

"We had our utility budget at the DOT virtually cut in half. That was a couple of years ago," he said, adding the Arch Bridge's lights were turned off on Friday, Nov. 27. "It was driven mostly by costs. But many lights were put up for want, rather than need."

Boynton said New Hampshire owns nearly all of the Arch Bridge.

There are roughly 3,000 lights on roads maintained by New Hampshire and each one costs about $30 a month to illuminate, he said. While there are no federal requirements for lighting on bridges, Boynton said, the state is abiding by national lighting standards.

"Everything is being reviewed on a case-by-case basis and it's a lengthy process," he said, mentioning a bridge on New Hampshire Route 18 was deemed essential. "For the most part, lighting on bridges is for aesthetics, and not required for highway safety."

Members of the Rockingham Selectboard and the public were told about the discontinuance of the lights when Municipal Manager Willis D. "Chip" Stearns II mentioned it in his manager's report during a Selectboard meeting on Dec. 3. Selectboard Chairman Tom MacPhee facetiously asked Stearns if the state was shutting off the lights to save money to repair the Vilas Bridge, which also connects the village to Walpole and has been closed to vehicular traffic in 2009, much to the dismay of local residents.

MacPhee told the Reformer he was shocked to hear Stearns' news.

"That sounds crazy to me, because it is a safety issue," he said when told about Boynton's explanation. "I'm very surprised they picked the Arch Bridge as non-essential.

There is a three-way stop where the bridge touches down in Vermont.

Though he understands NHDOT's need to save money, the chairman said the Selectboard may draft a letter to send to NHDOT to inquire about its rationale behind the decision.

In defense of the state's discontinuance of the lights, Boynton said there were also plenty of complaints about light pollution -- or excessive artificial light -- from residents on the New Hampshire side of the bridge. He also said many towns and cities affected by the discontinuance have the option of taking on the responsibility of financing and maintaining the lights.

Rockingham Highway Supervisor Mike Hindes said he noticed one of the light bulbs over the Arch Bridge was out about a year ago and reached out to NHDOT to replace it, which he does not believe was done. He said he got an e-mail last week from a NHDOT representative about the lights' discontinuance.

The few lights on the Anna Hunt Marsh Bridge and Charles Dana bridges, which link Brattleboro to Hinsdale, N.H., and the ones illuminating the road in between them will not be affected by the budget cuts because the electricity is funded by the town of Hinsdale.

There are no lights on the United States Navy Seabees Bridge, which connects Brattleboro and Chesterfield, N.H.

Domenic Poli can be reached at dpoli@reformer.com, or 802-254-2311, ext. 277. You can follow him on Twitter @dpoli_reformer.

Hinsdale NH Bridges Abandoned NHDOT and Concord

See, the “Governors Advisory Commission on Intermodal Transportation” ,  the Executive Council and ten year plan are inconsequential  to the damage with the loss of our bridge may bring to us.

The way I see it from a year ago, we got way less chance on the replacements in the next ten years than a year ago. The NH political finacial and idealogical warfare crisis is worsening.

Our obsolete bridges are a symbol of the damage happening all through NH and the nation...

I consider all the “Governors Advisory Commission on Intermodal Transportation” ,  the Executive Council and ten year plan are con jobs with all the politicians are throwing nothing but peanuts at us.

Like washing salt off our bridge late last summer.

December 03. 2013 10:48PM

DOT chief details highway funding worries; Senate president opposes gas tax hike

By GARRY RAYNO
State House Bureau

CONCORD — Facing a yearly $20 million deficit in the state highway fund, Department of Transportation Commissioner Christopher Clement told a House panel Tuesday the DOT faces 700 layoffs in fiscal year 2016.

He said without additional revenue, 20 of the 89 highway sheds will close, along with one of the six district offices in the state.

The state's highway fund receives about $120 million a year from the gas tax and about $105 million to $110 million from vehicle registrations.

He said without additional revenue, 20 of the 89 highway sheds will close, along with one of the six district offices in the state.

The state's highway fund receives about $120 million a year from the gas tax and about $105 million to $110 million from vehicle registrations.

A proposal to increase the gas tax by 12 cents over three years passed the House last session, but was killed in the Senate.

Senate President Chuck Morse, R-Salem, said Tuesday night the DOT cannot keep asking for more money.

"We're going to have to look at reducing spending ... rather than increase taxes or tolls," Morse said. "We produce the budget and (Clement) needs to live within his means."

A bill sponsored by Sen. Jim Rausch, R-Derry, Senate Transportation Committee chairman, will be introduced in the 2014 session to raise the gas tax 4.5 cents, which would raise $32 million a year for highways.

Morse said he would not support Rausch's bill.

"I continue to oppose a gas tax increase," he said. "It hurts the people who can least afford it."

Clement told the House Public Works and Highways Committee in fiscal year 2016, the state's 13 bridge maintenance crews, which repair the majority of the state's red-listed bridges, would have to be reduced to seven.

The current winter maintenance policy of having the roads "black and wet in two-and-a-half hours" won't hold, he said, noting it will take longer.

Patrick McKenna, the department's Director of Finance, said the 300-member engineering staff, which designs and inspects federal projects, will be cut in half.

"We may come up with the $250 million to finish the (Interstate 93 expansion project between Salem and Manchester), but not have the engineers to do it," said Patrick McKenna, the department's Director of Finance.

DOT officials said the problems stem from the loss of one-time money, leaving the department with a projected deficit of $48 million for the 2016 fiscal year, and $105 million deficit for 2017.

Over the past few years, the state's highway fund has been boosted from the "sale" of the I-95 high level bridge between Portsmouth and Kittery, Maine to the Turnpike system, which has about $30 million a year.

The state also bonded operating expenses for the department, but that avenue is maxed out, according to Clement.

He said ideally the state should be paving 500 miles of roads a year so that all the state's roads will be repaved every 10 years, but instead about 300 miles of roads are repaved a year, making it a 15-year cycle.

Although about 10 to 15 red-listed bridges are repaired and moved off the list every year, more bridges than that are added each year, he said. (The only path to a possible new bridge is getting it red-listed...but they won't make the call on it with our bridges. But more bridge jobs are piling up and we are getting less word done.)

"We've been doing less with less," Clement said.

Although he assumes the federal highway department will provide the $150 million a year it currently provides, Clement said, that is uncertain. In the past, the authorization would be for multiple years so the state could depend on the money, but now the federal budget is funded on continuing resolutions on a year-to-year basis.

Clement told the committee the state's turnpike fund paid for by tolls is in better shape due to two toll increases in the last six years, but the I-93 expansion from Salem to Manchester will come to a halt in October 2016, unless $250 million is found to complete the project from exit three to Manchester.

The last construction contract paid through authorized funding will be before the Executive Council today. After that contract, no others will be awarded without additional revenue from a new source, Clement said.