Name a type of truck and Edmund Stephens has probably seen it stuck under a bridge down the street from his house.
Coca-Cola truck? Yep. Camping RVs? You betcha. Standard box moving trucks? Too many to count.
An old CSX railroad bridge over James B. Rivers Memorial Drive in Stone Mountain has only 12 feet of clearance, and yellow signs nearby warn it is a “Very low bridge.” And yet, it can’t stop getting hit by trucks.
Since 2011, police have responded to 31 incidents involving the bridge, the Stone Mountain Police Department said in response to an Open Records Act request from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The latest hit happened less than a month ago.
“About once a week I see the remains of some box truck,” said Stephens, who lives about half a mile away from the Stone Mountain bridge. “This has been going on for decades.”
Stephens is worried about the condition and safety of the bridge, which officials said dates back to the 1930s. He said some of the wooden beams appear fractured and bent, and trains still go over it every day.
“The bridge is just ugly and ragged now,” he said. “The thing needs a repair.”
But CSX said it assesses its bridges — including this one — every time a crash happens.
“The bridge has been inspected and no new damage to the structure was discovered,” the rail company said in a statement. “Bridges throughout our network are thoroughly inspected using detailed protocols by dedicated inspectors who are extensively knowledgeable about engineering standards.”
CSX noted that it is not responsible for installing road signs warning drivers of the low bridge; that falls on local officials.
Stone Mountain Public Works Director Jim Tavenner told the AJC that the city plans to put up more signage to warn truck drivers. The signs have been ordered and will be installed within two weeks, he said.
“We’re gonna freshen it up, put some clearer signs, some more wording on it,” he said. “Maybe that’ll help people.”
The bridge crosses Memorial Drive right off Ga. 10 and near Ga. 78, just before the northern portion of downtown Stone Mountain. If you were to continue down Memorial Drive, you’d get to Stone Mountain Park.
“Why somebody’s driving down there with a semi, I don’t know,” Tavenner said.
Truckers have a resource to scout out routes in advance for low bridges. According to a Georgia Department of Transportation database designed to help truckers plan routes, the Stone Mountain bridge has the second lowest clearance in DeKalb County. Only the CSX bridge crossing on Ponce de Leon Avenue west of downtown Decatur is shorter, at 10 feet 6 inches.
In the core, four-county metro area, the DOT lists only eight bridges under 12 feet, with the lowest, a CSX crossing on Cole Street in Fairburn, being just under 10 feet. The database doesn’t note the height of Cobb County’s notoriously low Concord Road Covered Bridge, which is 7 feet high.
The Stone Mountain bridge stands a bit taller than the Concord bridge, which was hit twice this week. The almost 150-year-old Cobb bridge has been hit 17 times since Cobb County spent $800,000 to refurbish it in late 2017. Protective steel beams were erected in 2009 to absorb repeated blows from drivers.
“Clearly visible, flashing lights: ‘Bridge too low,’” signs would help, resident Stephens said of the Stone Mountain bridge. “There’s never been anything like that.”
Stephens said he lived in the area in the 1990s, and the bridge was still a problem then. He has since amassed an arsenal of pictures of stuck and damaged trucks, but remains shocked every time another one hits the bridge.
“I can’t quite figure it out,” he said. “You’ve got to know it’s too low.”
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