A 2022 report warned that around half of Overland Park’s street bridges would reach the end of their anticipated useful life within a couple of years.
The report, produced by the city’s special Infrastructure Advisory Group, said that of the 134 street bridges Overland Park is responsible for, 22 were already older than their estimated 50-year lifespan, and that by 2024, a total of 63 would meet that threshold (Pg. 19).
It also found that, by 2040, more than 30% of the city’s street bridges — that is, bridges the city is responsible for maintaining as part of its street network — would be in “poor condition.”
Now, crews are rebuilding one of those bridges at the heart of the city, and Overland Park is setting aside more funds each year for bridge work and repair, helped by increased sales tax revenue from an expanded infrastructure sales tax approved by voters in mid-2023.
Looking back:
The infrastructure group was tasked with crafting recommendations for amending Overland Park’s long-range approach to infrastructure, including everything from street maintenance to water quality and bridge repairs, said Fred Spears, a now-former city councilmember who chaired the panel.
One of the key themes in the group’s report was a need to put more emphasis — and money — toward maintaining and replacing aging infrastructure.
In the past, particularly during the years when Overland Park was growing rapidly in both physical footprint and population, building new infrastructure was a top priority. Now, as growth has slowed, the infrastructure group found that more attention needs to be paid to maintaining existing infrastructure.
Since the report was finalized, Overland Park has adjusted some of its infrastructure priorities and started directing more funds toward specific types of projects, including bridges.
“We are no longer a young city, we’re an aging city,” said Lorraine Basalo, director of public works. “We understood at that point that we needed a strong influx of investment in all of our infrastructure so that we can keep up with it.”
Infrastructure group prioritized “good” bridge condition
At the time of the Infrastructure Program Assessment report, the advisory group determined that 22 of the city’s street bridges were “older than their estimated useful life,” and projected that number to nearly triple by 2024.
It also suggested that, unless more money was spent on replacing aging bridges, more than 40 were expected to be in “poor condition” by 2040. (The assessment did not include bridges within the city that are owned by the Kansas Department of Transportation.)
Additionally, the report said that the city should expect aging bridges to “require more significant and expensive repairs or full replacement.”
The target, according to the assessment, is to maintain a system-wide collective “good condition” score for Overland Park’s bridges.
To do that, it recommended increasing funding for annual maintenance, extending the lifespan of new bridges to 75 years with a different design and engineering approach, and replacing at least one of the oldest bridges each year to keep them from reaching their projected “poor condition.”
What does it mean for a bridge to be at the end of its useful life?
Roughly half a century ago, a lot of new infrastructure was built in Overland Park in a short amount of time to keep up with rapid growth. Many of those assets — including bridges — are expected to reach the end of their useful lives at around the same time.
For bridges, the estimated useful life is around 50 years. So, bridges built in the 1960s and 1970s are all at or approaching the ends of their useful lives.
That doesn’t necessarily mean these bridges are crumbling, unsafe and in need of immediate replacement, Basalo stressed. However, it can mean that maintaining them is becoming more costly and that replacement might be on the table sooner rather than later.
“It’s not like an expiration date, where we hit that date and it’s done,” she said. “We understood at that point that we needed a strong influx of investment in all of our infrastructure so that we can keep up with it.”
Once a bridge gets beyond the “poor” condition category and into the “failing” category, things start to get more serious. Basalo said bridges at that point could begin to have structural integrity problems.
“What that means is, in the case of a bridge, it’s that the structural integrity of that bridge is no longer safe and adequate to take on vehicular loadings,” she said.
In the 2022 report, the infrastructure group said Overland Park had two “structurally deficient” bridges, which means that one of its major elements, like the deck or substructure, is in “poor condition.”
However, the report did not identify those two bridges, nor did it detail the condition of each street bridge in the city.
Since the report’s release, Overland Park has started rebuilding the 60-year-old College Boulevard bridge. Additionally, two bridges in southern Overland Park are slated for replacement in the near future, including the Kenneth Road bridge over Negro Creek and the Pflumm Road bridge over Coffee Creek.
Overland Park does bridge inspections regularly
The city inspects all of its street bridges with a pretty regular frequency, as required by state law, which allows staff to keep tabs on the structural integrity of each of them. That helps the city decide which bridges need preventative maintenance and which ones might need more aggressive intervention.
Basalo said that kind of cataloging and responsive maintenance can help extend the life of a bridge.
“If we can take really good care of our bridges by understanding the needs, we can extend the useful life of that bridge to a certain degree,” she said.
Previously, Overland Park budgeted around $250,000 for that sort of work annually, which could cover the cost of working on around three bridges.
Now, the city spends about $750,000 a year on bridge maintenance, enough to work on up to 10 bridges a year.
$2M earmarked for bridge reconstruction annually
Before 2022’s infrastructure assessment report, Overland Park did bridge replacement and major rehabilitation projects on an as-needed basis, Basalo said, considering factors like the age and condition.
At the same time, as those types of projects were becoming increasingly more necessary, they were still competing with major maintenance projects in other infrastructure focus areas, like street repairs and traffic signals.
Now, the city earmarks funds in its infrastructure program for major bridge rehabilitation or reconstruction projects, to the tune of at least $2 million each year. That puts several bridges in the capital improvement plan list in the next few years.
One such project is the College Boulevard bridge replacement project. Basalo said that the bridge was already in the works and was a signifier that more resources needed to go toward bridge replacements and fast.
Work on that bridge over Indian Creek began last summer and will stretch through this coming summer. The bridge, built in the mid-1970s, was found to be in poor condition and in need of replacement through an inspection. But, work was delayed on the bridge in part due to the cost and the inconvenience of closing the bridge.
Spears, who chaired the infrastructure group, pointed to the College Boulevard bridge project as a sign that the city is making strides on the bridge priorities laid out in the 2022 report.
Even though work on the bridge has been “a pain” while it’s happening — particularly for people working in Corporate Woods who have to detour from one of the primary entrances to the office park — he says it’ll be worth it in the long run.
Overland Park is looking at other bridges, too
Looking ahead, the capital improvement list the city keeps will have a placeholder each year for major bridge projects, Basalo said, starting in 2028, thanks in part to the extra funding provided by the expanded infrastructure sales tax.
“What this has allowed us to do is to address more needs,” she said. “Rather than being limited and saying, ‘OK, we’re going to pick the worst of the worst,’ now we’re able to be more strategic about how we approach it because we have a better budget. … We were able to really start to address our bridges in a better way.”
Basalo said the bridges that the city is looking at replacing or doing major rehabilitation on in the near term are pretty much all over the city.
One that’s currently on the radar is the Kenneth Road Bridge over Negro Creek, which the city inherited through annexation and could look to rebuild in 2030.
Overland Park is also looking at reconstructing the 60-year-old Pflumm Road Bridge over Coffee Creek, south of 159th Street, in 2027.
Other bridges Overland Park’s public works team is looking at for possible rehabilitation or reconstruction are primarily in the northern part of the city, where infrastructure in general is getting older sooner.
Other bridge project locations for 2028 and beyond are not yet identified in the city’s capital improvement plan.
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