Walnut Road Bridge stays at midnight

MORGANTOWN — When Brian Sherry lived in South Park, he’d look over from the Nice Road Bridge and joke that the Walnut Road Bridge is so ugly that it’s deliberately saved at midnight. 

Then he moved to Greenmont, and traversing that stark, barely lit span grew to become a daily a part of his household’s downtown expertise. 

Not so humorous. 

So, he spent seven months or so making an attempt to get the reply to a single query — whose job is it to interchange the lights on the Walnut Road Bridge? 

The responses shed some mild on why the bridge has been so darkish for therefore lengthy. 

Representatives of the West Virginia Division of Highways say it’s town’s job, and so they have the settlement to show it. 

An official with the metropolis of Morgantown says he can discover no proof town has ever maintained these lights and has no data of any such settlement. 

“I’ve requested them, ‘Hey, if it’s our duty, please present me the settlement and I’d be blissful to do it.’ However I must see it as a result of I’ve seemed by our data and I can not discover the place we signed any settlement saying these lights have been our duty,” Engineering and Public Works Director Damien Davis mentioned.  

Whereas the state isn’t sometimes eager on town getting concerned with state routes, lighting is a notable exception — but it surely’s a really combined bag. 

In some areas, town is chargeable for offering electrical energy and performing upkeep. In different areas that situation is reversed. Or it might even come right down to what particular a part of the sunshine wants consideration — for instance, the top and bulb are town’s, whereas the state is chargeable for the pole and wiring. 

However in all these eventualities, Davis defined, town has an settlement on file offering these particulars. 

That mentioned, he admits town pays the electrical energy for the lights on the Walnut Road Bridge, that means there must be some kind of association. 

“I’m not saying there isn’t an settlement, however I’ve requested them for it, and so they haven’t given it to me,” he mentioned. 

“We wish to work with the DOH. We’re making an attempt to work with them on different issues. We all know they’re brief on manpower. We all know District 4 is down a bunch of individuals and struggling for manpower, however the state has a $2 billion surplus proper now. We’re keen to do the work, however we don’t wish to subsidize the state.” 

As for Sherry and his Greenmont neighbors, with the ability to see is way extra necessary than who screws within the lightbulbs. 

“It must be any person’s duty. All people is appearing like the issue can’t be solved or it’s no one’s jurisdiction,” he mentioned. “We simply need some mild on the bridge.” 

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