PennDOT: Don’t stress out over cracks in concrete on new Harrison Avenue Bridge in Scranton
SCRANTON – Numerous stress cracks clearly visible on the concrete walls above the sidewalks on the seven-year-old Harrison Avenue Bridge are normal and not a structural problem, state transportation officials told the city.
The cracks have not gone unnoticed by the public. The Times-Tribune published a column about the cracks seven months after the bridge opened on Dec. 8, 2017.
Last month, Scranton resident Dave Dobrzyn told council at its Oct. 8, 2024 weekly meeting that it appears more cracks have formed in the concrete walls above the sidewalks along both traffic lanes of the bridge. He urged the city to ensure the cracks get sealed.
"Whenever cracks appear in concrete they should be repaired immediately and not put off or described as minor. Once the water gets in there it just sinks in. If you ever went to chemistry class, water is the universal solvent. It dissolves everything eventually," Dobrzyn said, according to minutes of that meeting posted on the city website.
A stress crack on the Harrison Avenue Bridge in Scranton on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024.
At the next weekly council meeting on Oct. 15, council President Gerald Smurl reported that the state Department of Transportation told the city such stress cracks are not unexpected and not indicative of any problem, structural or otherwise.
"The concern on Harrison Avenue bridge about all the cracks, we found out from the state, the bridge people, that there are no issues with that. They are aware of them," Smurl said, according to minutes of that meeting. "We spoke to them I guess earlier this year during the summer. They came and looked at them and said they were normal stress cracks. They will be treating it and filling all the cracks."
It's not clear when sealing will occur.
"We do have it in our maintenance plan to seal the cracks," PennDOT spokeswoman Jessica Ruddy told The Times-Tribune in an email this week.
Ruddy cited a July 25, 2018 column in The Times-Tribune by columnist Chris Kelly quoting a PennDOT engineer/project manager as saying such stress cracks are to be expected and the bridge is safe. The cracks occur because the steel skeleton of the bridge steel is designed to be flexible but the concrete side walls above the road surface and sidewalks are rigid. When the steel shifts, the concrete cracks. The state had experimented with concrete mixes that resist cracking, but the results were disappointing. Several other recent bridge projects had developed similar concrete cracks for the same reason.
All of that information about the cracks holds true today, Ruddy said.
That column quoted a resident who observed at least 90 cracks in the roadway and sidewalk, including almost 30 that stretched over the wall of the bridge. A reporter for The Times-Tribune on Tuesday counted over 100 cracks on one concrete side wall above the sidewalk and nearly 100 on the other side.
A stress crack on the Harrison Avenue Bridge in Scranton on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024.
The new Harrison Avenue Bridge, which cost $30.8 million to design and build, replaced the prior bridge that opened in 1922. The new bridge was built right next to the old bridge, which was demolished after the new one opened.
The bridge is officially named for Lt. Col. Frank Duffy of Scranton, who was the highest-ranking soldier from Lackawanna County killed during World War I. A president of the Scranton Engineers Club and supervisor with the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, Duffy went off to war with the 103rd Engineers on May 18, 1918. He was killed Aug. 17, 1918, by an enemy mortar in France.
