After being struck 35 times since 2020, Long Grove bridge just keeps on trucking
The recent travails of Long Grove's iconic covered bridge — struck by vehicles 35 times since reopening in August 2020 — has created something of a public sore spot for the village.
“Everyone likes to talk about it,” Village President Bill Jacob said. “It's unbelievable that the bridge cover has been struck that many times,”
Even one local business got into the act. When a bus got stuck inside the bridge only a day after it reopened, Buffalo Creek Brewing introduced a new ale, the Bus Wedgie.
The bridge took center stage once again about a week ago, when a Lisle man failed to heed the sign warning that clearance is only 8 feet 6 inches and crashed into the bridge with a U-Haul truck.
But the real story, the one village officials would prefer to see in the headlines, is that the bridge cover is doing just what it was designed to do — absorb the slings and arrows of careless drivers, while protecting the part of the bridge that is truly historic.
Village documents detailing 26 of the 35 crashes indicate most were minor, causing relatively little, if any, damage to the structure.
The most costly occurred June 28, 2021, when an engineering inspection and canopy repairs cost the village $1,969. However, the village said the costs were recovered through the driver's insurance.
Only two other crashes, according to the records, led to a village outlay. The village spent $244 for an engineer inspection after a November 2021 crash and $959 for another engineering inspection, this time in March. Once again, the costs were picked up by the driver's insurance.
“It hasn't been a financial burden to us,” Jacob said.
That's because when the bridge was reconstructed in 2020, it was built back better.
“When we designed the bridge, the metal superstructure cage that's on the inside of the wooden structure was specifically designed to be able to withstand impact,” village Trustee Chris Borawski said
The cover of the bridge, which has taken most of the impacts, is separate from the historic bridge span, Jacob added.
“The cover was built with a steel frame that has pylons that go into the earth (and) can take a truck impact of 20 miles an hour,” he said. “And then there's wood over it to make it look like the original cover that was put on the bridge.”
One contributor to the frequent crashes has been drivers' navigation systems leading them to the bridge, regardless of the size of their vehicles.
“If you go to Google Maps, or Waze, that seems to be the biggest problem. Everyone's glued to their phone, following their navigation and not even reading all the signs that tell you 8 foot 6 clearance, no trucks allowed,” Jacob said. “You just go down the list of all the warning signs and flags.”
The village declared Robert Park Coffin Road “local” hoping it would lead the apps to divert through traffic elsewhere. It succeeded for a time.
“And now, apparently, it's been lost again,” Jacob said. “So we've re-contacted the mapping companies, to let them know not to route vehicles through there.”
Village officials say they will continue to explore ways to avoid future crashes, or at least decrease their frequency.
“We continue to try to evaluate solutions that make sense for the village,” Borawski said.
Possibilities include optical sensors that trigger alarms or lights when a vehicle too big for the bridge approaches.
“But we also found a lot of evidence in different municipalities where things like that don't even work,” Borawski said. “The internet's full of videos of trucks that just go right through them and smash into the overpasses.”
Height guard clearance bars — otherwise known as headache bars — offer another option.
“But the problem is that we still have truck deliveries that need to make it into the back entrances of businesses and restaurants down there,” Borawski said. “So it's easy to say let's just restrict the height with what's called a headache bar. And it could be a decorative one. But we still need to get trucks in and out of there that are legitimately there for delivery.”
“We have residents who live there too, and they don't want to listen to buzzers and (see) lights flashing,” he added.
Jacob said the village has looked at a signaling system with lasers, but it is an expensive solution, especially for a village that doesn't levy a municipal tax.
“You could spend that money and you could have the same problem,” he said.
Meanwhile, he said, “The actual historic bridge is fully protected. And the cover's working as designed.”