After starting work on widening the two-lane section of road between MP 34-42 on the Glenn Highway last year, the Alaska Department of Transportation (AlaskaDOT) is set to resume work this summer.
AlaskaDOT’s administrative operations manager Justin Shelby told Alaskasnewssource.com that work could start as early as this summer.
“There is a possibility it might get pushed back,” Shelby said. “That being said, we are pushing hard to get this done this summer.”
According to Shelby, the department is still in the early planning phase of the project and it is unknown how the construction would affect traffic patterns, but there is public interest in having the bridges repaired.
He said the bridge deck needs to be redone to repair rutting and bumps at the transition joints, as well as preserve the life of the bridges. The project, however, is a big undertaking in terms of commuter impact.
“Part of the difficulty with this repair is it has to be done all at once,” Shelby said. “We can’t do like a single lane at a time, we have to do the entire bridge at once.”
Originally constructed in 1965, the northbound bridge is 25 years older than the southbound, which was built in 1990. The southbound bridge recently made headlines after a 37-car pileup occurred last month, shutting the highway down for hours as crews worked to remove the wreckage.
According to Shelby, the bridge repair project had been planned well before that incident occurred, with DOT releasing a fact sheet to the public in November of last year with an anticipated cost between $10-$20 million.
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Source: Alaska's News Source
