SLINGERLANDS — On Saturday evening, May 22, a box truck traveling east on Route 85 struck the underpass of the county’s rail-trail bridge.

Just two days before, a 13 foot, 6 inch high tractor trailer had gotten stuck beneath the same underpass as it was traveling west on Route 85.

Signs show the bridge height to be 11 feet, 2 inches.

The truck that struck the bridge on Saturday was a Penske-owned rental driven by Wesley Reid, 52, of Clifton Park, according to a release from the Bethlehem Police, which said that a large portion of the box was ripped from the truck.

Reid was charged with failing to obey a traffic-control device.

The road was closed for several hours while crews removed the truck and debris from the scene. Representatives from Albany County Public Works were also at the scene surveying the bridge for damage.

Albany County acquired the bridge in 2009, as part of its purchase of the nine-mile stretch of railway that runs between the Port of Albany and Voorheesville — now known as Albany County Helderberg-Hudson Rail Trail.

Built in 1912, the bridge has been in rough shape for some time. In 2019, the county said the bridge had been struck by vehicles passing beneath it nine times in the past 11 years. 

A 2008 report said that the bridge’s structural steel and much of its concrete were in “very poor condition.”

A 2017 inspection by the New York State Department of Transportation said that the structure was in such bad shape, its deficiencies could “significantly impact” the bridge’s “load carrying capacity.” In 2018, the county made temporary repairs to the bridge.

And in 2019, the county decided on a $1.9 million plan to remove the 42-foot wide existing bridge and replace it with a two-girder structure that is 14-feet wide, raising the structure to 15 feet, 6 inches above the roadway to meet state requirements.

Construction on the new bridge was to start in the summer of 2020 but the pandemic has interfered in two ways with the project, Mary Rozak, spokeswoman for Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy, told The Enterprise this week.

First, COVID-19 caused a delay in construction and then, subsequently, there was pending litigation and pandemic restrictions stopped court proceedings, said Rozak, calling it “a weird convergence.”

Rozak said she couldn’t give details on the litigation but stated, “Bonding is already in place to move the project forward once it is settled.”