Alarmed by accidents on
the Mathews Bridge, Jacksonville City Council
members yesterday called on the state to make
changes to the new steel grating at the crest of the
bridge.
The City Council last night approved a resolution
asking the Department of Transportation to
"expeditiously resolve the issues concerning safety
on the Mathews Bridge.""Either something is wrong
with the material, or something is wrong with how it
[the installation] was approved by the DOT, and
we've got to get a solution," said Lake Ray,
chairman of the council's Transportation,
Environment and Energy Committee.
The state has been "intensively" investigating
whether the new grating has caused an increase in
accidents on the Mathews Bridge, said Department of
Transportation spokesman Mike Goldman. He said
engineers have not yet reached any conclusions.
"There are a lot of issues on the table right
now," Goldman said, adding that engineers are
examining how the grating was manufactured and
installed.
The state put in the new grating over seven
months, installing the final panel in January. The
$3 million project replaced the original grating,
which had suffered wear and tear since the bridge
opened in 1953. The Mathews is one of Jacksonville's
busiest spans, with about 75,000 vehicles crossing
it daily between Arlington and downtown.
The state began its review after hearing
complaints from drivers and receiving a report from
the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. The Sheriff's
Office found that from September through Dec. 18, 20
drivers lost control of their vehicles while
crossing the grating.
In January, the state banned lane-changing on the
crest of the Mathews Bridge. Traffic engineers are
conducting a speed study to determine whether
lowering the 45 mph limit will improve safety, and
the state will install large overhead signs warning
drivers that the grating is slippery when wet.
City Council member Elaine Brown, who initiated
last night's resolution, said the "warnings are
needed, but I don't feel that's sufficient."
She said the grating causes the wheels of a car
to shift, which makes it harder to steer.
"When your tire is grabbed by the grating, I see
that as something that will cause a series of
accidents throughout the year," Brown said.
Mayor John Delaney also is concerned that the
grating "may be a safety hazard," said Susan Wiles,
the mayor's chief of staff.
"He drives it daily," she said. "That's his way
in, so he, too, has experienced 'unsteady footing,'
if you will."
The number of accidents on the Mathews Bridge
declined in 1999, when there were a total of 198
compared to 226 accidents in 1998. However, the
state is focusing on the segment at the top of the
bridge where the metal grating is located.
Transportation engineers want to know whether
accidents have become more frequent on the new area
compared to the old, and what factors contributed to
the crashes, Goldman said.
For example, the Sheriff's Office has found that
a 29-year-old Jacksonville man was intoxicated when
he lost control of his truck while he drove over the
grating in rainy weather on Jan. 24. The driver had
a blood-alcohol level of 0.21, which is more than
twice the legal limit of 0.08, said Detective
Michael Fouty.
The crash report filed at the time of the
accident listed the wet metal grating as a
contributing cause to the crash. Fouty said that
while any metal grating will be slippier than
pavement in the rain, the crash was caused by a
"combination of factors" that also included driving
while intoxicated and driver judgment. He said those
contributed to the accident "as much or more than
the condition of the grating."
The grating contains 240 individual panels, and
Ray said he thinks the problems stem from the panels
not lining up correctly. Each panel has bars that
run crosswise, lengthwise, and diagonally.
Ray said tire grooves, particularly new tires
that haven't been worn down, wedge into the
lengthwise bars. When those lengthwise bars don't
line up exactly from one panel to the next, the
tires shift into a different groove alignment, which
translates to a sensation for drivers that the
bridge is pulling the car, said Ray, who is a civil
engineer.
Ray said he also thinks the individual panels
were not properly designed for a bridge that arches
to the degree that the Mathews does. As a result,
there are spaces between the grating panels that
create a disruption between tires and the bridge
surface, Ray said.
He said he would like to see the state consider
whether "lightweight concrete" could be used instead
of steel grating. State transportation engineers
have said that concrete or asphalt was not an option
because that is much heavier than the grating, and
placing that much weight at the center of the span
would require an extensive overhaul of the bridge.
Huey Hawkins, the secretary for the Northeast
Florida district of the Department of
Transportation, has agreed to meet with the
council's transportation committee. The committee
meets Feb. 16, and Hawkins was trying to arrange his
schedule to make that session.