VERONA – While crews continue to remove concrete sidewalks in an effort to lighten the load on deteriorating cables on the Waldo-Hancock Bridge, the Maine Department of Transportation has developed a plan to use new cables to strengthen the aging span.

DOT officials announced Monday that the department will add support cables to the bridge in order to keep it safe for traffic until a new bridge can be built. It is uncertain, however, whether the new support cables will allow the department to change the weight posting of 24,000 pounds.

The department posted the 72-year-old Waldo-Hancock Bridge on July 11, banning trucks weighing more than 12 tons from traveling across it. Since then state troopers have been posted at both ends of the bridge to weigh approaching trucks and divert them from the bridge if they exceed the weight limit.

Deterioration in the main cables of the bridge has forced the department to alter plans to renovate the bridge, and instead adopt a streamlined process to build a new bridge by 2006.

The DOT support cable plan, which is expected to cost between $3.5 million and $5 million, involves adding 16 new, 2-inch cables over the top of the bridge. The new cables will be anchored on both the Prospect and Verona sides at existing anchor sites, according to DOT project manager Devin Anderson.

“We’ve been working with our design consultants on the most effective way to increase the strength of the bridge, and this plan represents a consensus on the best way to solve the problem,” Anderson said in a prepared release.

He stressed the new cables were a temporary fix designed to be implemented quickly.

The project will allow the transfer of some weight from the existing cables to the new cables, according to DOT spokesman Greg Nadeau.

“This provides the assurance we and the public need that this bridge will continue to operate well into the time needed to build a new structure,” Nadeau said Monday.

The news should provide some relief to area residents.

“I’m happy that they’re taking the necessary steps to keep the bridge open,” David Milan, Bucksport economic development director, said Monday. “I think people will feel more comfortable about using it.”

Milan is hoping the new cables will raise the safety factor enough to at least allow trucks to travel over the bridge while empty.

“That would cut the distance they have to travel in half,” he said.

The posting of the bridge has forced truckers to travel to Bangor in order to cross the Penobscot River. For those headed to the Bucksport area, that detour has added about 40 miles to the trip.

The support cables are projected to bring the safety factor from 2.0 to 2.5, a point where the department could consider changing the weight posting, although there is no guarantee that will happen, Anderson said.

“We want to be absolutely sure that the bridge will remain safe and open for noncommercial traffic until a new bridge is available,” he said. “Once the new cables are installed, we will know what percentage of the load can be shifted. We can then test to determine the exact safety factor. That provides definitive information for making a decision.”

The new cables have to be specially ordered, a process that is expected to take up to five weeks, although preliminary work is scheduled to begin in about two weeks.

Adding the new cables will require lane closures and delays during the construction period. In the fall, the process of tensioning the new cables will require the bridge to be closed at night to all traffic for up to two weeks.

Motorists crossing the bridge already face regular 15-minute delays as crews work to remove two narrow, concrete sidewalks from both sides of the bridge in order to ease the stress on the existing cables. Delays have been much longer during the busiest of times between 4 and 6 p.m., in some instances backing up traffic from the bridge to the Bucksport-Verona bridge, a distance of about a mile.

The sidewalk on the south side of the bridge has been completely removed, raising that side of the bridge approximately 7 inches and eliminating the crown on the road that had existed, according to Carol Morris, DOT spokeswoman.