VERNON TOWNSHIP — Interstate 79 travelers will face not one, but two, major construction projects in Crawford County next year.
The Meadville-Conneaut Lake interchange is being rebuilt and the two bridges carrying the interstate over Geneva Swamp will be rehabbed.
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is expected to go to bid next month on the swamp bridge project.
Each of the 3,600-foot long bridges is considered structurally deficient by PennDOT, meaning the bridge has deterioration of one or more of its major components. Although there is deterioration, the bridges are safe, said Bill Koller, a bridge engineer with PennDOT.
The problems are with the supports underneath where concrete has chipped away from the steel reinforcement bars. Moisture causes the steel reinforcement bars, or rebar, to rust, which causes the concrete then to pop.
“It’s chipped out, exposing the rebar, so we need to seal it off,” Koller said at a PennDOT news conference Thursday.
Years ago moisture and road salt got down through expansion joints in the bridge to the supports, he said.
For the last 15 to 20 years, PennDOT has used rubberized expansion joints and a waterproof rubber membrane on its bridges that is then covered with about 3 to 4 inches of asphalt to keep water from seeping to the supports. The Geneva Swamp bridges were paved in such a way a couple of years ago, Koller said.
Now, it’s time to repair the concrete supports, and there are 59 on each bridge, Koller said. The steel pilings that hold the concrete supports are in good shape, Koller said.
The steel pilings, some of which are 200 feet deep, were coated with a special sealant when the bridges were built in the 1960s, Koller said. Plus the swamp doesn’t have strong flowing water around the pilings to cause deterioration. The steel pilings themselves are filled with concrete and rebar.
Both bridges will be repaired under the contract and the concrete on the parapets — top edges of the sides of each bridge — also will be refaced, he said.
“Hopefully, we’ll never have to go back again,” Koller said. “I don’t want my kids to be fixing these bridges.”
The project will be done during the 2009 construction season and traffic will be maintained over the bridges, according to PennDOT officials.
However, it will be up to the contractor whether the work will be done on both bridges at the same time with each bridge open as one lane or whether all traffic will be shifted to one bridge while work is done on the other, PennDOT said.
The project is part of an effort by PennDOT to reduce the number of structurally deficient bridges in Crawford County.
Pennsylvania has nearly 6,000 structurally deficient bridges, and in July Gov. Rendell signed legislation to authorize $350 million for 411 structurally deficient bridges statewide. Some 46 bridges are in PennDOT’s District 1, which includes Crawford and five other northwest Pennsylvania counties.
Other bridges to be done next year include replacing both of the Six Mile Bridges on Interstate 90 in eastern Erie County and three bridges carrying Route 62 through Sharon in Mercer County, PennDOT said.
Keith Gushard can be reached at 724-6370 or by e-mail at kgushard@meadvilletribune.com.
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Geneva Swamp bridge work planned for 2009
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