Slide 1

Chester and Bucks County Bridge Survey A Pilot Project Resulting from the Recommendations of the Bridge Task Force. Keith T. Heinrich

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PennDOT Has Some History with Bridges Covered Bridges of Chester County Thematic Resources (TR) (1980) Resources (TR) (1980) Highway Bridges Owned by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, DOT TR (1988) Pennsylvania, DOT TR (1988) Pennsylvania Historic Bridge Inventory and Evaluation (1997) Numerous other individual bridge reports

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Why Are We Here? Several trends converge: Pennsylvania has a lot of historic bridges Pennsylvania has a lot of structurally deficient bridges Engineers like predictability There was a belief that the Lichtenstein Survey accounted for only engineering significance

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The Solution June 2008: PennDOT Deputy Secretary Rick Hogg meets with several concerned members of the public June/July 2008: Deputy Secretary Hogg calls for the creation of a Contextual Bridge Preservation Task Force September 2008-February 2009: The Task Force holds nine meetings May/June 2009: PennDOT Bureau of Design reviews the Task Forces recommendations September 2009: Task Force report is prepared

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Results of the Bridge Task Force 1. Examine all bridges (50 years or older) within listed or eligible historic districts and determine whether they are contributing or not 2. Create a context statement with which to evaluate bridges for Criterion A significance

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The Pre-Pilot Figure out what was do-able within our staffing and funding constraints Picked several listed districts and checked their inventories against the bridges which were within their boundaries Examined current aerials to evaluate whether there were potential rural historic districts that bridges could contribute to. Swamp Road Bridge, Bucks County (Key #091984)

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Results of the Pre-Pilot 1. We found that there were a number of bridges over 50 years old that were: Not accounted for in the historic district inventories Not mapped in CRGIS Not discussed by Lichtenstein in terms of their contributing status 2. Using aerials to find rural historic districts was time- consuming and ultimately unproductive

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The Current Project Fieldwork Portion Based on the results of our pre-pilot we: Decided to update our CRGIS with all PennDOT bridge losses and replacements since the Lichtenstein Survey Decided that we needed good locational and descriptive data for all bridges in Chester County Decided to look primarily at bridges that were 50 years old or very close to 50 years old Decided to use the power of GIS to map all listed and eligible historic districts in Chester County and to select and pull out all bridges 50 years or older that were within these districts Decided to field check all bridges selected from the above

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A Sample Map

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The Current ProjectContext Portion Based on the Task Forces recommendations we: Are holding 2 public meetings in Chester County (and 2 in Bucks County) to solicit input from preservationists, historians, etc. on what would make a bridge eligible for Criterion A. Are hiring a consultant to create the context. The second invitation-only public meeting will be held after this meeting.

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Anticipated Outcomes 1. Update CRGIS with all losses/replacements of bridges 2. Update CRGIS with the status of bridges in listed and eligible historic districts prepare report 3. Create a context to facilitate the Criterion A evaluation of Bridges Based on both the public meetings and the consultants research

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The End?