Photos by Jared Soares | The Roanoke Times

In addition to placing warning signs, city officials said they met with people in Garden City, Riverland/Walnut Hill and Old Southwest to try to reduce the inconvenience to drivers.

The Walnut Avenue bridge will be closed for resurfacing starting today with a proposed reopening date of June 5. The closing will influence drivers and residents living near Mill Mountain or who come into Roanoke from the southeast.

Roanoke Mayor David Bowers walks his dog Catcher near the Walnut Avenue bridge, which will be closed starting today. Bowers is among many residents and commuters who will have to cope with new traffic routes for the next month.

If the Walnut Avenue bridge is your gateway to downtown Roanoke, you'll have to find another route today -- and for the rest of the month.

The bridge is the quickest route downtown for several neighborhoods, including Garden City and Riverland/Walnut Hill. But this morning it will close to vehicular traffic for repairs. It is expected to reopen June 5.

"That is going to be very inconvenient for sure," said Mike Bowman as he stood outside his home on Arbutus Avenue in Southeast Roanoke on Sunday morning.

Bowman said he usually takes Riverland Road instead of the Walnut bridge to get downtown, but his wife, Paula, takes the bridge twice a day to get to and from her job near Towers Shopping Center.

"It's something that needs to be done," said city engineer Karl Kleinhenz, the project manager. "We'll get in and get out as soon as we can."

Kleinhenz said the bridge's driving surface will be milled off and replaced with latex-modified concrete, a substance he said is better than the current 20-year-old surface.

"Pretty much the lifespan of the driving surface has come to an end," he said.

Also, Kleinhenz said, some repairs will be made to the endcaps on the handrails. At least one sidewalk will remain open, he said.

The project will cost about $200,000, he said.

Kleinhenz said city officials know the closing may create an inconvenience for residents of several neighborhoods, so they held meetings with the neighborhood groups in Garden City, Riverland/Walnut Hill and Old Southwest. The city has also marked detours.

There are two Walnut Avenue bridges, one that crosses the railroad tracks and another, shorter one that crosses the Roanoke River. Only the bridge over the tracks will close, but without it, the smaller bridge will be of use only to people who need to access a short side road between the two bridges.

"It's going to affect the whole neighborhood," Roanoke Mayor David Bowers said Sunday. "Tomorrow morning I bet I'll take off on my usual route" toward the bridge to go downtown, he said, "half-awake and I'll say, 'Oops' and have to take a left" on Hamilton Terrace just before the bridge.

Samuel Knight crosses the bridge every morning to get from his Walnut Avenue apartment to U.S. 220 and head toward Boones Mill, where he does construction work.

Asked what route he will take today, Knight laughed.

"I have no idea," he said. "I was just going to figure that out in the morning."

Like many other people in the surrounding neighborhoods Sunday morning, Knight said he will probably take Belleview Avenue, just before the bridge, and eventually go by Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, increasing the already high level of traffic on Jefferson Street.

As he changed a flat tire on his Pontiac Grand Prix in the front yard of his Riverland Road home, Greg Muse said he expected the temporary closing to increase traffic not only by Roanoke Memorial but on his street.

From about 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. every weekday, he said, "we get backed-up traffic all the way through here."

There are many people who commute to Roanoke from Franklin County across Windy Gap Mountain and take Riverland, Muse said. He said he expects the Riverland traffic to get "a whole lot worse" while the bridge is closed.

Harish Tolwani, manager of the Gas N' Shop convenience store at the corner of Walnut Avenue and Piedmont Street, said he thinks the closing will cut into his business.

The store, which doesn't sell gas, gets a lot of business from people who are headed to and from Mill Mountain, Tolwani said. But, with the bridge closed, patrons will have to take a different route to the mountain and won't be driving by the store.

"It will hurt our business because nobody will be able to come," Tolwani said. He said he didn't understand why one lane of the bridge can't be kept open while the work is done.

As he stopped by the store Sunday morning, Dee Waller said he worried how the closing would affect Valley Metro's routes. He said he relies on the bus to get downtown or to the Tanglewood Mall area from his home on Walnut Avenue just up from the Gas-N-Shop.

Waller wondered aloud whether the bus would still pick up riders next to the store. Valley Metro officials couldn't be reached Sunday.

"The headache's going to be, 'Where's the bus going to run?' " Waller said. He said he planned to call this morning to find out.

"I'm not going to stand out there and let the bus pass me by," he said.