Million dollar bonus on the line for RM 1431 Bridge replacement

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- There are still several roadways in Travis County left damaged by flooding a month ago, and repairs will not be done until next month.

Let's start along RM 1431 at Cow Creek, where the entire bridge was washed away.

The Texas Department of Transportation is leading the repair work and said it's about 50% complete.

The contractor, Hunter Industries, kicked off work on July 21 and they are working overtime to get the work done and the bridge back open by the end of August, because there's a one million dollar bonus on the line if they do.

"The overall contract is 60 days in length, and we've put an incentive in the contract to pay the contractor, $50,000 a day, up to 20 days if they finish early. So the maximum they can achieve is finishing 20 days early, a million dollars," said Tucker Ferguson, TxDOT Austin District Engineer.

But everyone involved wants to wrap up work as soon as possible. The current detour takes 40 minutes, and some students going back to school will be impacted.

"We have we spoken to Marble Falls ISD, I believe there's about six students that live on the east side of the bridge. They are making arrangements to find a location on the west side of the bridge to pick those students up for the short time that they'll need to do that before the bridge is open," said Ferguson.

Construction on another bridge in Travis County is about to begin. It's the bridge over Big Sandy Creek, near the intersection of Round Mountain Drive and Nameless Road.

"You can see right here where the bridge shifted due to the force of the water and the debris that came in the early hours of July 5th," said Hector Nieto, a Travis County Spokesperson.

Travis County is in charge of repairing the bridge, and said it will actually stay in its new shifted location, but they'll reconstruct the entrance and exit of the bridge.

Travis County is finalizing the design to repair and reinforce the bridge. They expect work to be done in September. In the meantime residents are using a temporary low water crossing to go in and out of their neighborhood.

On Tuesday, TxDOT gave an update to the lane closure on Northbound Loop 360 at Spicewood Springs, and said it wrapped up a temporary fix and all main lanes are back open.