A 96-year-old one-lane bridge on Cherniske Road in New Milford is finally headed for the wrecking crew after surviving a decade of organized resident opposition. The Town Council voted in 2022 to move forward with a modern two-lane replacement, and recent roadside tree clearing has taken place for the project.
A Decade of Pushback Reaches Its End
The fight over the Cherniske Road Bridge, which carries traffic over the West Aspetuck River, has simmered since well before this year's votes. As reported by News-Times, the span was built in 1930 and is now considered structurally deficient, no longer meeting current structural, hydraulic, or roadway standards, according to the town's own application. New Milford closed the bridge in 2021 because of deterioration and installed a temporary one-way crossing in 2022, the same year the Town Council voted 6-to-3 to move forward with a permanent two-way replacement.
That 2022 vote didn't end the debate. Robert Gambino and 37 other letter signers have argued that Cherniske Road deserves protection as the scenic road it legally is, defined under town code as a cherished and irreplaceable resource essential to preserving New Milford's rural heritage, the station's report notes. The road itself is officially designated scenic, a status intended to preserve New Milford's rural heritage.
Procedural Steps Clear the Way
The New Milford Town Council has discussed forming a Scenic Road Committee to address the scenic-road matter. Separately, back in May 2022, the New Milford Department of Public Works posted gross-vehicle-weight restrictions on Cherniske Road, along with Barker Road and New Preston Hill Road, to reduce stress on aging spans ahead of reconstruction, according to the Fix New Milford project site.
Residents who live along the road have their own reasons for wanting it to stay narrow and slow. Tim Latta said he did not let his children play in his side yard because cars drove too fast, per the News-Times report. New Milford officials, for their part, decided that speed enforcement, rather than keeping an obsolete bridge in place, was the better way to manage driver speeds on the corridor.
Why the State Won't Allow a One-Lane Rebuild
State funding and one-lane bridge eligibility are part of the debate over the Cherniske Road replacement.
Opponents of widening Cherniske Road have pointed to another Connecticut town as proof that narrow bridges can be cherished rather than condemned. Norwalk's 127-year-old alternating one-lane, two-way Perry Avenue Bridge over the Silvermine River offers another example of local appreciation for a narrow bridge, with its design framed as encouraging courtesy, as reported by CT Insider.
Environmental Review and Construction Details
The contiguous 117-acre Kahn Preserve and 150-acre Nostrand Preserve are in an ecologically sensitive stretch of the West Aspetuck River Watershed that supports breeding populations of mink and otters, while wood ducks gather at a pond. Kahn Preserve is associated with the Northwest Connecticut Land Conservancy, while Nostrand Preserve is town-owned. New Milford has also identified the bridge site as potential bog turtle habitat, a species Connecticut lists as endangered, though an environmentalist report found the proposed replacement will not affect bog turtles or their habitat, per the News-Times account. The New Milford Wetlands Commission plans a site walk before voting on the wetlands permit.
Once underway, the replacement project is expected to take six months and will include reinforced-concrete wing and end walls, new bridge rails, roadway drainage improvements, reconstructed approaches, riprap slope protection, and natural streambed material beneath the structure.
Part of a Larger Townwide Push
Cherniske Road is just one piece of a broader infrastructure campaign. Other New Milford bridge projects include work on Merryall Road, Sand Road, and Van Car Road. The scale of the problem extends well beyond New Milford: historical bridge inventory analyses by the Federal Highway Administration reported 2010 counts of structurally deficient and functionally obsolete bridges among Connecticut's 4,186 bridges overall. A separate 2008 report put the state's average bridge age at 40, according to CT Numbers. For New Milford, the Cherniske Road Bridge now stands as one more aging span finally reaching the end of a very long road.
