Three bridge projects will exhaust Douglas County’s share of federal transportation grants for the next five years under a plan approved this month.

Keith Browning, the county’s engineer and director of public works, said the projects — expected to absorb an estimated $1.03 million in federal money — would be worthwhile investments, even though the county’s list of possible road projects stretches longer and would cost millions of dollars more.

Browning’s attitude: It’s better to spend the money now than risk losing it later.

“You don’t know for sure that it will be available in five or six years,” Browning said. “We have to do all these projects, but bridge projects are critical. If you don’t add shoulders to a road, the road won’t collapse. It may not be as safe as it could be or as efficient as it could be, but it’s still functional. You can still have traffic on the road.

“A bridge, at some point — if it’s old enough — you just have to close it or you risk a collapse.”

The bridge projects Douglas County commissioners agreed to include on the county’s five-year transportation plan:

• Replace a County Road 442 bridge that crosses Captain Creek east of Eudora, just west of the Johnson County line. The estimated $468,000 project would use $374,400 in federal money, replacing a bridge that was built in 1931 along the original Kansas Highway 10 and now carries about 500 vehicles a day.
• Replace a County Road 1023 bridge that crosses Rock Creek in southwest Douglas County, just south of County Road 460. The total project would cost about $369,000, of which $295,200 would come from a grant; the bridge was built in 1949 and now handles about 60 vehicles per day.
• Replace the deck of a County Road 1057 bridge that crosses the Wakarusa River, south of Kansas Highway 10 about midway between Lawrence and Eudora. The new deck would be wider than the one installed in 1957, so that shoulders could be added for the 1,300 vehicles that use the bridge each day; $356,000 of the $445,000 project cost would be covered by the federal government.

The county gets about $380,000 a year from the federal government for such projects but already has spent $540,000 of expected funds on two projects: Stull Road west of Lawrence and ongoing reconstruction of County Road 1029 northwest of Lawrence, from the Farmer’s Turnpike to Lecompton.