A bridge that was closed in east Liverpool nearly six years after being declared unsafe is scheduled to open again on Thursday.

The Elizabeth Street Bridge will be reopening to public traffic on Thursday, October 27, 2022.

To mark the event, the two oldest residents in the neighborhood will be the first to drive over the bridge which has been closed since January 2017 following a recommendation by the Ohio Department of Transportation.

An engineering consultant said that concrete supports were in such bad condition, the bridge needed to be torn down.

The closure posed an inconvenience to residents of the Klondyke neighborhood on the city’s East End.

The only other route to and from the neighborhood took travelers across railroad tracks, which could be blocked when a train passed.

It wasn’t until May 2021 that work began on replacing the bridge.