A crumbling sidewalk wall of a West Lackawanna Avenue bridge in Scranton is being examined for repairs, city DPW Director Mark Dougher said.
"We've been working on trying to get a schedule to fix the (bridge's) sidewalks," Mr. Dougher said Friday. "We're going to look to start it as soon as possible."
The issue was raised during Thursday's council meeting by Councilman Jack Loscombe. While the bridge deck is fine, a crumbling concrete wall section of the northern sidewalk has significantly worsened recently and is "hanging by a wire," and the walkway should be closed, Mr. Loscombe said. It's not known how much repairing the sidewalk wall may cost, when work would start, how long it would take or from where the money would come.
"We don't have the money to repair it at this point, (but) we do have to close those sidewalks off. It's a very dangerous situation," Mr. Loscombe said.
Mr. Dougher said city engineer John Pocius has looked at the bridge and, "As soon as I get his evaluation in a week or two, then we'll see where we stand and have more information on how to proceed."
Efforts to reach Mr. Pocius Friday were unsuccessful.
Mr. Loscombe noted that he raised concerns two years ago about the bridge's sidewalks, which are in need of repair, and the section of sidewalk wall that is pulling away from the span. Though the bridge is owned and maintained by the city, Mr. Loscombe in July 2011 asked the state Department of Transportation to examine the span. One of the department's engineers recommended that the northern sidewalk be closed because of the wall section pulling away, he said.
PennDOT spokesman Michael Taluto said Friday that the bridge's sidewalks are the city's responsibility.
The wall section has pulled away further in recent days and appears to be held on only by electrical lighting wires in a conduit that has broken open, Mr. Loscombe said.
"Right now, that section is literally hanging by a wire," Mr. Loscombe said. "I don't know how it's still hanging on there but it's going to go down any day, and hopefully someone is not walking on those sidewalks when it goes down."
On the outer wall, exposed rebar can be seen in the section that is pulling away.
"I know we have a lot of bridge problems in this city, but I would hate to see another bridge from West Side go down and be closed, or at least cause bodily harm to someone before something could be done about it," Mr. Loscombe said.
"We've had significant time and warnings about it, and nothing has been done, and that seems to be the problem here. We wait until things are crumbling before they're taken care of, and then they end up costing two, three times as much to repair."
Contact the writer: jlockwood@timesshamrock.com, @jlockwoodTT on Twitter