Charles Crane/MDN Motorists drive across the Third Street bridge shortly after the City of Minot announced it had been reopened to traffic Tuesday.

Minot businesses and residents on the north side of the Third Street Bridge in Minot were jubilant Tuesday afternoon after the City of Minot at long last removed the barriers and opened the bridge up for traffic.

“We are excited to see our regular customers who are missing,” Shannon Michels, owner of Karma Convenience Store, said. “We took a hard, hard hit. We needed it to open.”

The City of Minot reopened the Third Street Northeast bridge Tuesday afternoon after an inspection by the North Dakota Department of Transportation found the structure able to support traffic without load restrictions.

“The good news is that the bridge is safe for vehicle traffic,” City Engineer Lance Meyer said in a news release. “The bridge’s load rating came back positive and the bridge can safely support our local traffic as it always has.”

The bridge was scheduled to reopen in early July after work was completed on the north side of the bridge that was related to the Mouse River Enhanced Flood Control Project. But the structure remained closed to vehicle traffic until the NDDOT completed an inspection after residents raised concerns regarding the safety of the bridge.

“We do need to program a repair project to fix the cap on one of the piers,” Meyer said. “Our recommendation to city council will be to design a project this fall and winter, put it out for bid next spring and then complete the project in 2025.”

Meyer said a rehabilitation project on the Third Street Northeast bridge had been on the schedule for 2027, but his recommendation will be to move a portion of that project to 2025.

“We accomplished what we wanted to do with the inspection, and now we know the bridge is safe for pedestrian and vehicle traffic,” he said. “But we can’t walk away and forget about it. There is work that needs to be done, and so our recommendation will be to address that work in 2025.”