Hayden J Emrah
WZBD
During their most recent meeting, the Adams County council spoke with County Engineer Nate Rumschlag, who is applying for an Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) grant to receive upgrades on many of the county’s rural bridges to help reduce the severity of potential crashes.
The grant, as part of the state’s Highway Safety Improvement Program, will allow for up to 50 select rural bridges across the county to be implemented/upgraded with attenuators–guardrail stops on each bridge corner that’re designed to absorb impacts, helping to minimize damage for both drivers and infrastructure. Total costs are an estimated $2.93 million, but with a 90% reimbursement rate from the state as per the grant stipulations, Adams County will only have to utilize $292,951.84 in funds to receive this substantial infrastructure upgrade, which will then become the standard for bridge projects going forward.
To express the benefits of adopting attenuators, Rumschlag noted a 2024 crash in Wells County where a driver hit the concrete side of a rural bridge: despite being a relatively low-speed crash, the damage to the vehicle and historic bridge was substantial–and could have been minimized if attenuators had been installed.
As for INDOT’s goals, grant programs like this are referred to as systemic safety: while most projects are based on a crash correlation–the more dangerous the area, the more potential for funding–systemic safety seeks to create an overall safety net by unilaterally improving an area to reduce the potential for crashes, as rural areas can be harder to track and correlate the potential for these upgrades. The funding for this program is around $50 million, with each county able to submit their own improvement plan from a list of methods and potential projects. Rumschlag applied for the grant in September, with the applications being open for submission until the end of October, when disbursement amounts will be announced thereafter.
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