Officials from San Benito County held a ribbon-cutting to celebrate the opening of the Hospital Road Bridge on Dec. 10.
The bridge was funded with $10.95 million in federal and state money through the Federal Highway Bridge Program to cause no out-of-pocket cost to the county in completing the bridge. The construction took twenty months, beginning in May, 2020 and concluding in early December.
“This bridge is important because there’s been no way across here since 1998,” Mike Chambless, San Benito County Interim RMA Director, said during the ceremony.
“Back in 98, El Niño washed out the gravel bridge that used to get constructed each year for folks to drive through,” Chambless said. “After that, the environmental regulations and and views of society changed and there was just no way to do that anymore.”
County employees applied for federal grant money in 2004.
Chambless credited the federal, state, and county personnel who made the project possible through the years, but called out longtime county engineer Deems Katada for seeing the project through.
“He truly was the steady hand on the rotor to navigate us through this project,” Chambless said of Katada.
In addition to easing traffic through the area for both school and work commutes, the bridge was credited as being an additional option for emergency services to speed up response times.
Dist. 4 Supervisor Bob Tiffany noted the many area residents who have grown up not knowing there used to be a way to cross the river at Hospital Road.
“The last time people could cross this spot on the San Benito River was 25 years ago, 1998,” Tiffany said.
Andres Rodriguez was present as a representative from State Dist. 30 Assemblyman Robert Rivas’ office, and highlighted the engineering and construction work that went into the bridge.
Rodriguez said, “We all know that earthquakes of all magnitudes are common to our area and I’m excited that this bridge was innovative, that it was custom-designed to allow the bridge to travel with the Calaveras Fault instead of fighting the fault.”
“We all know that there is a tremendous need for a lot of road improvements and it is probably our greatest long-term priority for public works,” Supervisor Tiffany said. “It is our hope that the completion of the Hospital Road bridge is just one of many projects that we will see happen in San Benito County in the near future.”
Tiffany explained the next new bridge project for San Benito County will be a replacement of the heavily traveled Union Road bridge not far from the Hospital Road bridge.
You must be logged in to post a comment.