NORTHAMPTON — After nearly a year of being closed, the Clement Street Bridge reopened on Friday, though work on the key connector is not yet finished.
“One of my popular Facebook posts,” said Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz, after announcing the bridge’s opening on the social media site Friday.
The post has dozens of happy comments under it, including “Hallelujah!!!” from Tara Brewster, “Awesome!” from Jack Hornor and “HUGE,” from Grace Goodwin-Boyd.
The bridge was shuttered to motor vehicle traffic last December following an inspection from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation that found the bridge to be structurally deficient. Narkewicz said that even before that inspection, the city planned had planned to do repairs to the bridge as part of its capital improvement program.
The project was put out to bid, with the NEL Corporation of Middleton being the winning bidder.
“It was a $382,000 project,” Narkewicz said.
The contractor finished work on Thursday, and MassDOT inspected the bridge and judged it safe to reopen the next day. By Friday afternoon, cars were using the bridge again.
An estimated 3,000 cars pass over the bridge daily. At the same time, the bridge’s driving surface still needs to be resurfaced, which the city plans to do in 2019.
“Our top priority was getting the bridge reopened,” Narkewicz said.
Bera Dunau can be reached at bdunau@gazettent.com.