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If you normally travel down Worsham Road for work, you’re going to need to find another route for the next few months or expect a longer travel time. The Virginia Department of Transportation has announced that as of Monday, Jan. 29, portions of Worsham Road will be closed due to a bridge replacement. 

Specifically, the section from Route 15 (Farmville Road) to Route 630 (Redd Shop Road) is closed to through traffic right now. That will continue through May 31. 

VDOT officials say they recognize this is a major change for some folks, so they’ve set up signs in the area, both about the closure and a detour. That detour will have drivers taking Route 15 to Route 628, then connecting with Route 630, before looping back to Route 665. Official estimates from the VDOT staff project that the detour will add about nine to 10 minutes to your drivetime each day. That’s not taking into account bad weather, which it looks like we’ll be experiencing on Wednesday, as well as next week. 

The work has been in the works for some time, with VDOT securing money from the state to do the replacement in their latest budget. While it’s not been labeled as critical and has been still safe to drive on, the bridge at Briery Creek was one of several that VDOT put new restrictions on, starting in 2019.

Originally, any vehicles carrying up to 27 tons of weight could cross. That got reduced to 19 tons, one of six bridges in Prince Edward County to have the change put in place, due to safety concerns. The Worsham Road bridge, along with thousands of others in Virginia, were built before two major changes. Hauling vehicles over the last decade have developed to carry much heavier loads than the bridges were originally designed for.