A new pedestrian bridge was installed over a creek in the Broyhill Crest neighborhood on May 14 – just 52 days after the old decaying bridge was removed and Mason Supervisor told the community there was no money for a replacement bridge, and just 24 days after Gross reported the Park Authority found the money.
The old decaying steel and wooden bridge, linking Murray Lane and Lockwood Lane in Annandale, was removed by the Fairfax County Park Authority on March 23 after park officials deemed it unsafe. At that time, plywood barriers were put up to block access across the creek, and Gross sent an email to Broyhill Crest residents telling them a new bridge would cost $80,000 and the county didn’t have the funds.
Local residents who had been urging the county to fix the old bridge were disappointed that the county would simply remove it without any plans for replacing it. A post in the Annandale Blog about the bridge generated 56 comments and was picked up in the Greater Greater Washington blog.
On April 20, Gross advised residents that the Park Authority was indeed able to find the funds for a prefabricated fiberglass replacement bridge and that having county staff do the work instead of a contractor would save $20,000. Gross said the project would be completed in six weeks, and it looks like that deadline will be beaten by about two weeks – despite many rainy days. While the bridge is already up, the project isn’t quite completed and there’s a construction vehicle still on site.