MDOT: Fort Street Bridge reopens

The Fort Street Bridge has reopened, the Michigan Department of Transportation said Saturday in a Facebook post. 

Electrical problems had prompted its closure for emergency repairs.

The bridge closed around noon Thursday and reopened temporarily early Friday. In an email to the news late Friday, Diane Cross, a spokeswoman for MDOT, said the closure was due to electrical problems with the bridge lifting and lowering.

The original bridge, which was built in 1926, was the oldest of a dozen drawbridges erected over the Rouge River in the 1920s to give freighters to access to Ford Motor Co.'s River Rouge manufacturing complex.

It was rebuilt in 2013 in a project that included reconstructing Fort Street between Miller Road and Powell Street, upgrading utilities, and replacing the double-leaf bascule bridge with a single-leaf-style that includes overhead counterweights.