The Post Road bridge over the Blanco River will get a temporary replacement soon, officials said. The bridge was washed out during the Memorial Day weekend floods in May. “I never knew it was so complicated to fix a bridge,” Hays County Judge Bert Cobb. “We have to deal with so many agencies because it’s across a river in a major watershed.” The county plans to construct a temporary crossing over the river to bridge the gap until a permanent replacement can be built. Under a partnership program with the Texas Department of Transportation, the county will cover 25 percent of the new bridge’s cost, and the department will cover the remaining 75 percent. Commissioner Ray Whisenant said there is a process in motion for TxDOT to design and rebuild the Post Road bridge where it was before it was destroyed. Whisenant said the design process will be a delicate one because Post Road was formerly part of the Camino Real, a historic trail stretching from Louisiana to Mexico. “We are trying now to put together the opportunity to put a temporary bridge in the position of the old Post Road bridge, and it would be there for a period of time until [the permanent replacement] can be bid in May or June of next year,” he said. He said he expects the county to have a construction timeline and cost estimate for the replacement bridge in the next two weeks. Whisenant said the county is also looking at long-term solutions for the Post Road bridge that include building an elevated crossing that would be higher than the former low-water bridge. The county may also choose to put the bridge in a different location, further upstream or downstream of the old bridge. Alejandro Garcia, a resident of the Blanco River Ranch neighborhood near the bridge, said residents in the area are eagerly anticipating the construction of a replacement bridge. Garcia said Blanco River Ranch residents traveling to Kyle must now drive about 30 to 35 minutes, as opposed to 15 minutes when the bridge was in place. That presents an obvious problem for the residents, many of whom have regularly scheduled appointments at Seton Hays Medical Center. One resident is also a surgeon at the hospital, and if he is called in for emergency surgery the increased commute time could affect his ability to arrive in a timely manner, Garcia said. The lack of traffic in the area may have other consequences too, he said. An abandoned, flood-damaged house just outside Blanco River Ranch poses a different kind of safety threat to the neighborhood. “It’s kind of an invitation to some squatter or drug dealer,” Garcia said. “That’s another problem with not having traffic on that road.”