Crumbling concrete against Glenn Highway bridge under repair
Drivers reported concrete crumbling from a Glenn Highway bridge over the Matanuska River.
PALMER — State crews were conducting repairs Thursday to a section of concrete crumbling off the Matanuska River bridge that drivers reported was leaving chunks of debris along the Glenn Highway this week.
Material installed against a joint connecting the bridge deck with the highway was scattered along the roadway late Wednesday, according to driver reports in a widely used local Facebook group.
The new problem area is unrelated to a recent major overhaul of the Knik River bridge spans, located about a mile south.
State transportation officials said they were aware of the issue early Thursday and dispatched a crew to make repairs. The failing concrete is in the right-hand lane of the southbound Matanuska River bridge span at mile 31.5 of the Glenn Highway outside Palmer, they said.
Officials said the issue is not an emergency and can be repaired quickly.
“We’re not anticipating that there's going to need to be some sort of emergency project to make more extensive repairs,” Department of Transportation and Public Facilities spokesperson Justin Shelby said in an interview. “It should be something our maintenance is able to handle.”
The southbound span of the Matanuska River bridge was built in about 1990 as part of a major Glenn Highway project, Shelby said. The northbound span is part of the original highway and was constructed in the mid-1960s, he said.
While no project is scheduled to specifically resurface or reconstruct the Matanuska River bridge, it will be examined as part of a major, yearslong Glenn Highway project stretching from Airport Heights in Anchorage to the Palmer Interchange. That project will be conducted in three phases starting next year, with initial work in Anchorage, Shelby said.
This week’s Matanuska River issue follows the completion of a major resurfacing project early this month on both spans of the nearby Knik River bridge.
That months-long project included replacing the joints and smoothing the approaches along both the northbound and southbound spans.
-- Contact Amy Bushatz at contact@matsusentinel.com