Olustee Creek Bridge Replacement

The Olustee Creek Bridge was a $3.7 million bridge replacement project located at the Columbia/Union County Line in Florida. The previous bridge was over 61 years old at the time of its demolition. The bridge over water was beginning to show major wear after its long life, and it had become time for a replacement to meet the modern-day safety and structural standards.

DRMP provided design of this bridge replacement project. The facility is a 2-lane rural arterial with two, 12-foot wide travel lanes with 8-foot wide unpaved outside shoulders. The roadway was reconstructed in the vicinity of the proposed bridge in order to raise the profile to provide additional vertical clearance over the creek for the scour critical bridge. The project also included right-of-way acquisition and plans for a detour route during construction of the bridge. The bridge replacement consisted of a 4-span, 372-foot Florida I-Beam structure over Olustee Creek with 24-inch PPC piles, sloped abutments protected by riprap and MSE walls at each end bent. The typical section of the bridge consisted of two 12-foot lanes, two 8-foot shoulders and traffic railing for an overall out-to-out of 43-foot 1-inch. Plans included the design of roadway, drainage, maintenance of traffic, signing and pavement markings, structures, environmental permitting, and surveying.

The previous Olustee Creek bridge was supported by wooden piling with extreme section loss and was at the end of its design life. The new Olustee Creek Bridge provides motorists on CR 241 a safe, worry-free way to travel across the creek that is up to date with modern structural engineering methods and aesthetic design. Raising the profile of the bridge was also key since the previous bridge experienced overtopping and flooding during extreme storm events. The new structure’s design supplies a longer lifespan with minimal maintenance costs for FDOT District Two.