The Halls Ferry bridge will officially reopen to public traffic Friday afternoon, Warren County officials announced this week.

Brian Robbins, senior project engineer at Neel-Schaffer, Inc. and assistant engineer for Warren County, said the project was completed in just over half the time frame originally allotted for the work when Dozer LLC of Natchez was given a 120-day window on October 31.

“It’s going to be open after lunch,” Robbins said. “We’re not done with the project, but we are way ahead of schedule. We tried to push the contractors as hard as we could and they are actually only about 52% through with their contract time, so they could have had it closed twice as long as it has been.” 

Robbins said much of the early completion time is due to the work done by both Dozer LLC and Warren County before initially closing the bridge.

“They did a lot of work preemptively before we actually shut it down,” he said. “They did everything they could without shutting the bridge down. They got in there and busted tail to get it done.”

Robbins said, despite the early opening date for the bridge, motorists may notice detour signs for several days in the area around the site.

“I’m going to have those covered, so it’s not confusing,” he said. “But, I don’t want to completely remove them in case we have some kind of anomaly happen and need to temporarily shut the bridge. We’ll have the signs still in place. They’ll still be around, but they’ll have black bags on them.”

Robbins also cautioned that roadwork will continue on the project, so motorists should remain vigilant when traveling through the area.

“There may be some delays for another month or so,” he said. “I wanted to get it open to traffic, but we still have to do the paving of the road and installing of the guardrails on the approach. Those types of items we can do under traffic and just have a flagman out there, so we’re not closing the bridge.”