YOUNGSTOWN — The rehabilitation of a small bridge on South Avenue, which starts Monday, will mean a 3-mile detour for those who travel on one of the city’s busiest corridors.

The bridge goes over the Youngstown and Southeastern Railroad Co. train line, just south of the larger Peace Officers Memorial Bridge that crosses the Mahoning River.

That will force the closure of South Avenue between the Interstate 680 exit and Williamson Avenue.

The $1,635,232 project includes a new deck and rehabilitating the bridge.

The board of control awarded the contract May 8, 2025, to Marucci & Gaffney Excavating Co. of Youngstown. The city received a $1,065,900 state grant for the project.

Because of the need to relocate gas lines, the project’s start date was delayed.

The work will take 120 days to complete.

About 9,100 vehicles use the bridge daily.

During construction, the section of South Avenue near the bridge will be closed to vehicular and pedestrian traffic with detours.

The vehicular detour will be three miles in length and use Williamson Avenue, Market Street and Indianola Avenue.

The pedestrian detour will be 0.7 of a mile in length and use Williamson Avenue, Gibson Street and Dorothy Avenue.

Also, the detour for I-680, which is undergoing extensive work, will be adjusted.

During the bridge work, access will be maintained to all adjacent properties, residences, businesses and intersecting side streets during the project. That includes the old South Side Park, which is not open to the public, and the South Side Veterans Memorial.

The work includes rehabilitating the bridge’s substructure, refacing the abutments, replacing the approach slabs that connect the roadway pavement to the bridge as well as the guardrails, sidewalks, bridge railings, curbs and pavement markings.

The bridge was constructed in 1957 and had major rehabilitation work done to it in 1990. It underwent further improvement work in 2015.

The bridge is listed as “poor” and “structurally deficient” by the Federal Highway Administration.

The FHA’s National Bridge Inventory report states the structure is “intolerable requiring high priority of corrective action” while the substructure has a loss of a section or deterioration.

The report added about the substructure: “Local failures are possible. Fatigue cracks in steel or shear cracks in concrete may be present.”

Also, the bridge railings and guardrail do “not meet current acceptable standards or a safety feature is required and none is provided,” according to the report.

Of Ohio’s 29,960 bridges, about 5% are classified as structurally deficient.