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Next week, the state Department of Transportation is presenting a plan to replace a span in Pine Point.

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SCARBOROUGH – The nearly 60-year-old Pine Point Crossing Bridge on Route 9 in Scarborough is in poor condition, according to the Maine Department of Transportation, which has a plan to replace the aging structure.

On Tuesday, Sept. 16, at 6 p.m., the department will host a public meeting at Town Hall to review its timeline for replacing the bridge, built in 1955 to take traffic over the B&M Railroad.

Andrew Lathe, a project manager for the bridge program at the transportation department, expects the entire project to take about 18 months to complete, with construction starting in the fall of 2015.

The goal is to build a temporary bridge in order to ensure continuous traffic flow while the old bridge is demolished and the new bridge is installed. Lathe said the estimated cost of the project is $3.9 million, which will all come from the state with no local funding required.

When the new bridge is completed, he said, it would be wider than the existing structure, allowing for two, 6-foot-wide pedestrian and bicycle lanes. In all, the new bridge will be 36 feet wide and 129 feet long, according to Lathe.

At the public meeting next week, he said, the plan is to “listen to concerns, receive comments and answer questions from anyone with an interest in the project.”

The state is “particularly interested in learning local views relative to project consistency with local comprehensive plans, discovering local resources and identifying local concerns and issues,” the meeting notice states.

Lathe said the new bridge would be constructed with a pre-cast concrete beam superstructure, concrete abutments and a center pier consisting of a pre-cast cap on reinforced concrete-filled steel piles.

For Jim Wendell, Scarborough’s town engineer, the bridge replacement project can’t start soon enough.

“The bridge is at the end of its rope and needs to go,” he said this week.

He’s also pleased the state is going with the town’s preferred option of putting up a temporary structure to ensure access to Pine Point, which is a popular summer destination.

Wendell said the department initially presented three options for replacing the Pine Point Crossing Bridge, but the option that included the temporary bridge “offered the least disturbance to travel patterns and the shortest construction cycle.”

He said another challenge for the state will be taking down the old bridge and constructing the new bridge over railroad tracks that are still in use.

In all, Wendell said, the sooner the department gets started the better.

“Sooner rather than later would be better,” he said this week. “We would just like to see it get done and move on. But, while the bridge is in tough shape, (its replacement is) not (yet) critical.”

A view of Pine Point Road in Scarborough, circa 1907, before the railroad overpass was built. Now, the state is proposing a new bridge that would be 36 feet wide and 129 feet long.