The state is paying a consultant $71,000 to investigate why decorative fencing of the 17th Street bridge over the Downtown Connector in Midtown crashed to the ground last month, Channel 2 Action News reports.
According to documents obtained through an open records request, pieces of the canopy fence, including bolts that pulled away, concrete samples, epoxy and other materials have been sent to a laboratory in Northbrook, Ill., near Chicago for testing.
Results are expected back in about six weeks.
"We expect a very well put together report with a clear determination of what happened,” Jill Goldberg, spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Transportation, told Channel 2.
The state has hired Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates Inc., an architectural and engineering firm based in Northbrook with an office in Duluth, to investigate the Aug. 13 mishap. About 170 feet of fencing fell from the 830-foot span, but no vehicles or anyone on I-75/85 below were struck.
At this point, GDOT intends to pay the consultant’s fees using taxpayer funds and has not decided whether to try to recoup the expense from C.W. Matthews Contracting Co., Goldberg said.
A regular inspection in February 2010 gave the structure high marks – a rating of 94.72 out of 100. A spokesman for the Federal Highway Administration called the rating a “solid A.”
Matthews installed the fence but has said it did not manufacture or design it. The contractor has maintained the fence’s collapse was not a construction issue.
Wiss, Janney has reviewed construction documents and made a field investigation, taking notes and photographs and collecting samples. It plans to conduct on-site load tests and undertake a structural analysis of load forces where the fence was attached to the bridge.
Completed in 2004 at a cost of $38.2 million, the bridge was built to carry traffic from Midtown to the new Atlantic Station development.
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