The bridge over the Wakarusa River on County Road 1055 is expected to reopen by 5 p.m. Thursday.

The bridge has been closed since April 4 as King Construction finished work to its deck and an abutment that was started last year but suspended during the winter. Douglas County Public Works Director Keith Browning said all was on track Wednesday morning for the bridge’s reopening on Thursday afternoon. The bridge is about 1.25 miles south of 31st Street on CR 1055, which becomes Haskell Avenue in Lawrence.

With the bridge reopened, those using the popular route to and from Baldwin City will have a barricade-free drive before the next round of construction to modernize CR 1055 starts in 2018.

However, another well-used Vinland Valley route will be closed starting in June.

Browning said a section of County Road 458 in the Vinland Valley will be closed for an estimated four months as a bridge over Coal Creek is replaced. The bridge a quarter mile east of East 1700 Road frequently overtops after heavy rains, Browning said. Barricades are slated to go up June 6 for the start of construction.

There are no big road construction projects on the scale of last year’s improvements to CR 1055 from Vinland to Baldwin City, Browning said. The county’s next big roadway project will be next year’s reconstruction of CR 458 from CR 1 north of Lone Star to North 1200 Road. The project is to upgrade the section to modern design standards and will involve the addition of paved shoulders, flattening of roadway slopes, replacement of narrow culverts, realignment of curves and pavement resurfacing.

It is now proposed the county will return to CR 1055 starting in 2018 with a series of projects, which with last year’s improvements, will modernize the road from Lawrence to Baldwin City.

The first of those is now scheduled for 2018 and involves the reconstruction of CR 1055 from the Wakarusa bridge south 1.5 miles to its western intersection with CR 458, Browning said. That project, too, will add shoulders to what is now a narrow road with steep ditches.

Additional projects on CR 1055 are proposed for 2019 to 2020, Browning said. The one-mile section shared by CR 458 and CR 1055 is to be reconstructed with some of the section’s steep hills graded. Work to improve the about 3.5-mile section of CR 1055 north of Vinland would follow, Browning said.