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Mitchell Expy bridge damage repairs cost: $1 million-plus

DOT Northern Region Bridge Foreman Fred Paulsen checks out a big crack during an inspection of the Mitchell Expressway bridge on Saturday.
Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities
DOT Northern Region Bridge Foreman Fred Paulsen checks out a big crack during an inspection of the Mitchell Expressway bridge on Dec. 11.

Transportation Department to select contractor for project after Friday, the deadline for proposals

State Department of Transportation officials say it’ll cost somewhere more than a million dollars to fix the Mitchell Expressway bridge that was damagedin December when it was struck by a piece of heavy equipment. And they hope to hire a contractor for the project soon.

DOT officials will begin reviewing proposals for the bridge-repair project after Friday’s deadline to submit those bids. A department spokesperson says it’s estimated the cost to repair the damage at somewhere between $1 million and $2 million.

“We are going to be contracting-out those repairs, and we expect they’re going to happen this summer,” Caitlin Frye said in a recent interview.

Another DOT spokesperson says once the contractor is selected, it’ll be brought on board during the design process to enable it to get the repair work done as soon as possible.

The bridge was damaged back on Dec. 10, when a piece of earthmoving equipment called an excavator that was being towed on a flatbed trailer slammed into the underside of the structure. A Fairbanks police investigator said the arm of the excavator – the part with a bucket on the end that does the digging – hadn’t been lowered enough to pass under the bridge.

The impact cracked girders and broke-off pieces of concrete that fell onto South Cushman Street, underneath the bridge. The lane on that portion of the street remains closed, as is one of the lanes on the bridge that passes over South Cushman.

Fairbanks Police Corp. Dan Welborn said Thursday that the department didn’t issue a citation to the driver of the truck. Welborn declined to identify the driver. A police spokesperson has said the truck was registered to NC Machinery, a Fairbanks heavy equipment sales and service company.

Frye, the former Transportation Department spokesperson, said the agency will file a claim with NC Machinery’s insurance company to reimburse the state to pay for the damage. She said that’s what the department does whenever someone damages state infrastructure.

“So that means if anybody runs into a stop sign or a light pole and knocks it over, we do have a process to file claims with insurance companies and get reimbursement,” she said.

Frye says DOT won’t know exactly how much it will seek in reimbursement until the project is completed. Because the actual cost of repair projects, big or small, often is hard to anticipate.

“In this case, obviously the dollar amount is larger than a stop sign,” she said, “but that is the process that we are going to use.”

Tim Ellis has been working as a KUAC reporter/producer since 2010. He has more than 30 years experience in broadcast, print and online journalism.