Jill Schramm/MDN Vehicles travel over the Third Street Northeast Bridge Monday. The bridge is scheduled for temporary repairs as it awaits replacement.

The condition of the Third Street Northeast Bridge has worsened, prompting the Minot City Council to approve a new plan Monday for making repairs. The plan will mean northbound traffic will need to be detoured for three months, with full road closure during some of the deck work.

The council was given another repair alternative that was more costly but would have allowed the bridge to remain open except for full closure during deck installation and jacking.

The option chosen has an estimated cost of $372,140-$422,140, including construction and engineering. The more expensive option was in the $492,140-$542,140 range.

City Engineer Lance Meyer said the original plan to patch and repair was pushed aside with the discovery of impact to a bridge girder bearing. He explained water running off the bridge, which can carry road salt, is affecting one of the bearings and compromising the pad underneath it.

“What bearings do is allow your bridge to rock back and forth and expand as temperature causes your steel to move around,” he said. “So without bearings, your bridge would essentially lock up and crack and break. So, bearings are pretty important in a structure, especially one that’s almost 900 feet long.

“That changes our game plan, and what we’re going to have to do now is replace this bearing so that we have good movement on our bridge,” Meyer continued. “Again, it’s kind of that balancing act where we’re not trying to invest too many dollars into the bridge, because we know that eventually it needs to have a replacement.”

Asked about the impact of northbound closure on emergency services, Meyer responded that detours and closures are coordinated with emergency dispatch so emergency traffic can be rerouted.

The council approved the new scope of work on a 7-0 vote.

The council also awarded 2025 street seal and microsurfacing projects, but on a 6-1 vote.

Council member Rob Fuller objected to awarding the bids to Asphalt Preservation Company and Asphalt Surface Technologies rather than considering different types of street repair offered by local companies.

“We create committees to explore ways to foster our economic growth. We focus on the efforts of the chamber and the city and every other initiative that we can think of to make Minot more attractive to businesses. But then what do we do? We send $3.5 million worth of work over to Minnesota,” he said. “If I were a business considering where to relocate or open a new venture, seeing that would certainly give me pause. To me, it sends a message that Minot doesn’t support our local businesses.”

Fuller said he hears from local companies that for the same cost as microsurfacing or chip sealing, they can do a mill and overlay lift that will perform better.

“We’re not even giving our local companies a chance to bid because we’re asking for something some of them don’t do, when there’s comparable things that they could do,” Fuller said.

‘If we wanted to get into mill and overlays everywhere, the public would love it,” Meyer replied. “We’d have the best roads in the state. But we’d never be able to afford it.”

He noted the state is transitioning more to microsurfacing because of the lower expense.

Fuller said the city needs to give local businesses the opportunity to show they can do an overlay for the same price as the other techniques. Meyer noted they can prove it by submitting bids for additional projects scheduled for bid opening the next day.

“They come to my office tomorrow, I’ll take it,” he said of those bids.

In other business, the council approved the hiring of a mobility manager for City Transit. A primary function will be to develop and manage an Americans with Disabilities Act Eligibility Certification Program, in which paratransit riders must certify an inability to navigate traditional fixed route transportation.

Federal rules mandate certification, but federal funding also will cover 80% of the mobility manager’s employment cost. The change is part of Minot’s transition from a rural program to an urban program for federal funding purposes.