The average lifespan of a bridge surface is around 50 years. The concrete surface that thousands of cars use every day to cross the Aroostook River in Caribou has held up for nearly 75.
The Maine Department of Transportation believes it’s time to replace it. But doing so will shut down the Aroostook River Bridge, a vital connection to the eastern side of Caribou and neighboring Fort Fairfield, for as long as five months in 2027.
Detouring to the next bridge over the river — in Presque Isle or Fort Fairfield — could add up to an hour to some commutes and delay first responders. But leaving a lane open to traffic during most of the construction is likely not an option, the DOT said.
So Caribou, Fort Fairfield and their surrounding towns are preparing for a reality where an extensive detour is part of life for nearly half a year.
Around 3,500 vehicles cross the bridge on an average day, according to the last Maine DOT traffic count on the bridge, conducted in June 2024.
In more than 23 pages of responses submitted to the DOT’s virtual public meeting on the project, locals slammed the bridge closure as “crazy,” “unacceptable” and “devastating.”
They lamented the extra time and mileage it will take to get to work or school — and the impact on their wallets — and wondered if emergency services would be able to reach them in time. They wrote about the hardships placed on farmers who could no longer take their equipment across the bridge and pleaded for a temporary bridge to be constructed.
“I know this needs to be done but this will be hard on me,” one wrote.
Municipal leaders met in early January and shared many of the same concerns.
The Caribou Police Department, for instance, said it responded to 135 calls on the east side of the bridge between April and October of 2025, ranging from animal complaints to domestic violence assaults.
With the bridge closed, the time to respond to those calls will increase, Caribou Police Chief Corey Saucier said Monday, as will associated staffing and fuel costs.
“Chief Matt Cummings of the Fort Fairfield Police Department and I have begun discussing all possible ways to work together to reduce emergency response time for our citizens on the east side of the bridge. Again, that will come at a cost, and one I believe the state should be assisting us with,” Saucier said.
The two police departments have not yet formalized a memorandum of understanding establishing how Fort Fairfield would assist Caribou on calls the closure would make it closer to. But their chiefs have expressed support for each other.
“Our main concern is public safety, and we are always willing to assist our neighboring communities,” Cummings said.
The Fort Fairfield Fire Department will also need greater staffing to meet an increase in demand, it said, which combined with longer transport times could cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Because of the distance, Cary Medical Center in Caribou, which is on the west side of the bridge, would not be an option for a lot of calls, the department said, meaning patients would be instead driven to Northern Light A.R. Gould Hospital in Presque Isle.
“If I had a stroke or heart attack my trip to the hospital takes about seven minutes as of now,” one person wrote in an online response. “If you close the bridge my trip to the hospital becomes at least 50 minutes by ambulance.”
For someone who lives just over the east side of the bridge, traveling to downtown Caribou will require them to backtrack to Fort Fairfield and choose between two options: a roughly 23-mile, one-way detour north along the Grimes Road or a 28-mile trip south to Presque Isle, then back up Route 1 into Caribou.
That means significantly longer commutes for around 42 students who attend Caribou’s schools from that area, as well as those from Fort Fairfield who attend the Caribou Regional Tech Center.
There is a saving grace. The full bridge closure is expected to run between May and October of 2027, so it will only affect bus travel for the last and first six weeks of two school years, with summer break occurring during construction.
RSU 39, Caribou’s school district, expects to run an extra bus and hire a part-time bus driver during that period, at an estimated cost of $36,000, Superintendent Jane McCall said.
“It’s going to cause hardship on many businesses, farmers, families,” McCall said. “But if a structure is deemed to no longer be safe … they have to do the work, right?”
Because of how the bridge is built, keeping one lane open during most of construction is not plausible, DOT project manager Mark Parlin said in response to questions posed by Caribou officials.
“We did considerable preliminary engineering to see if we could stage construct this bridge,” Parlin said. “The deck acts like a lateral structure member, and when it is removed the bridge is no longer able to support one lane of alternating traffic. We are currently digging deeper into other options but this engineering is going to take some time.”
The DOT explored constructing an adjacent temporary one-lane bridge, but opted against it. That solution would cost 65% more than the lowest cost option and extend the total construction time by several months.
It instead opted for a hybrid, accelerated construction timeline, where the bridge is fully closed for five months — as opposed to eight months with conventional construction. There will be an additional four months of alternating, one-lane traffic during the rehabilitation process.
The DOT estimates the project will cost $17 million, funded out of the department’s latest work plan.
It plans to put it out to bid on Sept. 30, according to the department’s latest advertisement schedule report. Construction is slated to begin in late 2026, with full bridge closure beginning in the summer of 2027. The DOT expects to complete the project that fall or winter.