ACHD declares emergency closure of busy Boise bridge. Its new weight limit: About 1 car

The Ada County Highway District declared an emergency closure of Southeast Boise’s Eckert Road Bridge at 11:30 a.m. Friday after discovering that the bridge had deteriorated more than previously known. The bridge connects Harris Ranch to Interstate 84 and is a common route for residents to get to Timberline High School and Federal Way.

It’s also at the entrance to Barber Park, where thousands of Boiseans hop on rafts and into inner tubes over the summer to float the Boise River.

“This is late breaking news that we just received this morning,” ACHD Director Ryan Head said during an emergency commission meeting. “(We) were informed of widespread moderate to severe decay” of nearly half of the bridge’s pillars.

”The recommendation was a weight restriction of 3 tons for the bridge, which is not much more than a passenger vehicle,” Head said.

The agency didn’t think it was tenable to restrict the bridge and recommended full closure of the route for the foreseeable future, Head said. ACHD plans to begin working toward a full removal and replacement of the bridge, he said.

“We don’t believe it’s in the best interest of the district and for the safety of the public to leave the bridge open and risk a failure of any sorts,” Head said.

The offices of Ada County Commissioner Rod Beck and Mayor Lauren McLean were notified to begin coordinating on the impact the closure could have on emergency services, Head said. He said he also would contact the school district to coordinate bus routes.

“Ultimately with that kind of weight restriction, none of these vehicles could go over the bridge anyway,” Head said.

The bridge will remain open to pedestrians and cyclists, ACHD said in a press release. The bridge connects the Boise River Greenbelt, which runs on both sides of the river west of the bridge and only the north side to the east.

The timeline for the bridge to reopen to cars is “uncertain,” ACHD said in the release.

According to Head, the agency inspects bridges every two years, with more in-depth evaluations for concept studies before beginning projects. The last time the agency did an in-depth evaluation on the Eckert bridge was five years ago.

“There was severe deterioration from the last assessment to what we found this week,” he said.

The latest assessment found moderate to severe decay on 22 of 48 bridge pillars, according to the press release. On the center pier, five of the six timber piles showed severe decay.

The agency already planned to remove and replace the bridge in its 2025-2026 fiscal year, according to ACHD’s five-year plan. The emergency declaration, Head said, will move the timeline up.

“It strikes me that something kind of fell through the cracks here for this to sneak up on us like this,” ACHD Commissioner Dave McKinney said. “I would have thought that the deterioration of the timber piles would have been monitored more carefully.“

Commissioner Kent Goldthorpe said the agency needed to treat the closure with the same urgency as when the Cloverdale Bridge over Interstate 84 closed following a deadly crash in 2018. The Idaho Transportation Department inspected the bridge during the closure and found it unsafe for vehicles, according to prior Idaho Statesman reporting.

Some of the commissioners questioned where the money would come from for the replacement. There could be issues with moving funds from projects that have already started, they said.

“Somebody is going to get fried today,” Goldthorpe said.

Commissioner Patricia Nilsson recommended that the agency may want to reach out to Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson and the state’s two senators in case the agency needs assistance for emergency funding.