The Sixth Street Bridge, located over the White Alloe Creek on Park University’s campus, collapsed more than a year ago but work is expected to begin in the next few months for repairs.

The University has orange signs on the outside part of that street where pieces of the culvert broke away.

With this damage, now only one vehicle can pass by at a time rather than two over the bridge on the northwest side of campus. No work has been done to fully repair the bridge as of yet.

Michelle Budd, Environmental Health and Safety Compliance Coordinator at Park University, explained the cause of the collapsing of the bridge as “simply the age of the structure.”

“(We have been) waiting on the permit to actually do the repairs to go through the core of engineers with EPA,” Budd said. “(There is a) Clean Water Act with White Alloe Creek running through there, so getting the permit was what was taking so long to start.”

Park recently got the EPA approval to start work so that Sixth Street traffic can get back to normal.

“The timeline right now is to get that bridge repaired and back up to par within the next school year,” Budd said.

Kharnell Williams, junior, said he knew about the culvert collapsing.

“I feel pretty safe driving over it even though I know the Sixth Street Bridge has collapsed before and hasn’t been repaired,” he said. “I believe of it was a real safety hazard it would’ve been repaired by now.”

By next year, the broken street over the White Alloe Creek is expected to be in working progress.