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US 80 Ogeechee River bridge to open soon
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Georgia Department of Transportation board member Ann Purcell speaks about the safety improvement the new Highway 80 bridge across the Ogeechee River at the Effingham-Bryan county line will mean. - photo by Pat Donahue
Patrick Donahue
For the Bryan County News
Updated: Nov 19, 2015, 12:16 AM
Published: Nov 19, 2015, 12:25 AM

Soon, a new bridge across the Ogeechee River along Highway 80, at the Effingham-Bryan county line, will be open to traffic, and local officials can’t wait.

The new bridge will replace an aging span across the river that state and local officials proclaim is too narrow. The Georgia Department of Transportation held a ribbon cutting for the new bridge Nov. 12, though it’s not quite ready to take on traffic.

“We’re very excited and very excited for the opening,” said Ann Purcell, the GDOT board member for the 1st Congressional District. “One of the things is GDOT always stresses safety as a priority. This bridge was built 40, 45 years ago. It is not up to standards. It’s a very narrow bridge, and we have a lot of truck traffic.”

Said Effingham County Sheriff Jimmy McDuffie: “The old bridge was getting in bad shape.”

The new bridge, which is actually one longer span and another shorter stretch, will be 40 feet wide. It will have 12-foot wide lanes and eight-foot wide shoulders. The bridge it is replacing is only 24 feet wide.

“It was old when I was young,” state Rep. Bill Hitchens, R-Rincon, said of the current bridge. “And this one is almost twice as big as the old one. Safety has always been a primary concern for me. There have been some horrible accidents on this bridge over the years.”

It is a heavily used bridge, and the GDOT and law enforcement representatives noted how many trucks use the crossing as a means to get around the GDOT weigh station nearby on Interstate 16.

“Highway 80 is one of our busiest state routes in Effingham County,” McDuffie said. “You see the trucks use this road to skirt around the weigh station.”

The two sections of bridge are about 1,300 feet and 180 feet long. They were built at a cost of approximately $8.3 million by Gregory Bridge Company.

“This is a great occasion for everyone on Highway 80,” said Don Grantham, the GDOT board member for the 12th Congressional District.

Officials also praised the effects of House Bill 170, which the General Assembly passed last session and Gov. Nathan Deal signed into law. The legislation changed how motor-fuel taxes are collected and dispensed to the GDOT, and it is expected to be a boon for the department.

“This was one of the primary reasons HB 170 was passed,” Purcell said, “so we can correct some of the bridge problems. You realize how narrow that bridge is when you’re going the opposite way.”

Purcell also thanked the state legislators for passing HB 170

“In my 18 years in the House, this bill might be the most important one we’ve passed,” said state Rep. Ron Stephens, R-Savannah, the chairman of the House Economic Development Committee. “It is significant to public safety, and it sends the right message to business in the future.”

State Rep. Jon Burns, R-Newington, the House majority leader and a former GDOT board member, also lauded the board for its work in making dwindling resources work.

“The board has done an outstanding job with the resources to make sure the public in this state has safe roads and bridges,” he said. “It is just what we want — a safe structure for our traveling public to utilize, to make our school buses, moms and dads and children are safe.”

Burns also pointed out how important the bridge is to local commerce, especially for trucks coming in and out of the bustling Savannah port and to nearby paper and saw mills.

“This bridge only enhances the ability to move it and enhances the ability to move it safely,” he said.

HB 170 could mean as much as $1.2 billion to the DOT for road projects each year.

“The days ahead are going to be the brightest you’ve seen for transportation,” Purcell said.

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Later yall, its been fun
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Ted O'Neil
Updated: May 23, 2018, 6:03 PM
Published: May 23, 2018, 6:05 PM

This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

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