By James Day
Silverton-area residents who commute in and out of the Salem-Keizer area will be facing another detour.
Marion County will be replacing the bridge over the Pudding River on Hazelgreen Road NE near Torvend Road.
The good news is that project planning is just beginning and that construction is not scheduled to begin until 2024. The bad news is that when the closure comes it likely will be for ten months.
A similar project closed a Silverton Road bridge over the Little Pudding River for approximately eight months from May 2021 through January 2022.
The bridge being replaced on Hazelgreen was built in 1969 and is experiencing decay, has inadequate rails and is expensive to maintain, said Mark Foster, project manager for Marion County.
“The new bridge will be wider, more seismically resilient and meet current roadway and structural standards,” Foster said
The county already has held one public meeting to discuss bridge design and detours, with another open house likely to be scheduled for early 2023.
The county is tentatively planning to use Silverton Road as the detour route, with motorists using Shannon to get to Silverton Road from the west and Brush Creek from the east. The county still is reviewing the detour plan and say it could “change slightly” based on comments received from the public.
The detour will be 24/7 for the bulk of the project, but like the Silverton Road/Little Pudding River span, there will be plantings and less-intrusive work to be performed at the tail end of the project that will not require closures.
The project is scheduled to cost approximately $5.4 million, with about $690,000 coming from the county and $4.7 million in federal funds. The state gas tax is paying for the county share, with the federal gas tax the source of the federal monies.
According to a timeline produced by county officials the project currently is in the engineering/environmental phase, with final design work set for this June through June 2023. Right-of-way acquisition is scheduled for July 2022 through June of 2023, with construction tentatively set to begin in February 2024 and conclude in October 2024.
Approximately 5,400 vehicles use the Hazelgreen corridor daily, according to a county traffic count from 2019.
The county also is collecting data from a three-question survey that can be accessed at www.surveymonkey.com/r/XMJZ2B2. A video on the project is viewable at www.co.marion.or.us/PW/Engineering/Projects/Pages/HazelgreenBridge.aspx.
