A section of Main Street in Caribou will be closed for the next four months for a large culvert replacement project that includes building a federally funded wildlife crossing under a busy road.
Crews are working to replace the culvert that ran under the Prestile Brook Bridge with a wider concrete arch designed to allow moose, deer and other large animals to pass under Route 164 on a stretch of Caribou’s Main Street a few miles from the city’s downtown.
The project will also remove barriers to allow fish to travel more easily under the roadway.
Construction shut down the bridge on July 20, a closure that the Maine Department of Transportation expects to last until Nov. 20, it said in a press release. Signs along Main Street direct drivers to detour onto nearby Route 1, creating a roughly six mile detour from one side of Prestile Brook to the other.
The project is expected to be fully complete next spring, the DOT said. It is funded through the federal Wildlife Crossing Pilot Program, a product of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 intended to prevent collisions with animals on U.S. roads.
That’s a reality Aroostook County is deeply familiar with. It sees nearly three times the number of moose collisions annually than Maine’s next closest county, Penobscot. The portion of Route 164 that crosses over Prestile Brook is a hotbed for wildlife traffic in the area, city leaders have reported, and sees around 2,700 vehicles travel it daily, according to DOT data.
Fort Fairfield contractor McGillan Construction won the bid for the construction, with a contract totaling $4.76 million.
The Federal Highway Administration allocated roughly $9.3 million for the project, making it the fifth-largest of the 16 such projects approved nationally in the most recent funding cycle for the pilot program.
The remainder of the funding is directed toward the purchase of the new culvert, which is pre-cast; clearing the area around the bridge; right of way negotiations and contingencies, the Maine DOT said.