Glenn Highway work affects nighttime drivers

PALMER — Bleary-eyed drivers trying to take the Glenn Highway south of Palmer may want to reconsider.

Nightly resurfacing efforts started Wednesday, and the Glenn is now closed from the Parks Highway interchange to the Palmer-Wasilla Highway from 7 p.m. until 5 a.m.

The closures are scheduled to last until Aug. 3, but the project should be complete in about a week if everything goes as planned, said Merle Sena, project engineer with the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities.

“We are calling it a closure, but it is more of a controlled access,” Sena said. “Local traffic is still going to have access by following a pilot car.”

Sena said the official detour will route cars up Parks Highway to the Seward-Meridian Parkway and then east on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway. At the intersection of the Glenn and Palmer-Wasilla highways, cars wanting to go south will wait for a pilot car.

“That’s just the formal detour,” Sena said. “If they want to take Trunk Road or Hyer Road or any other route they know, they are more than welcome to.”

Drivers wanting to leave their homes or businesses will have to wait for pilot cars traveling in the direction they want to go.

“This is similar to the resurfacing from the Glenn Highway from Hiland Road to Eklutna,” Sena said. “But there, they have four lanes so they can direct traffic around the work. Since we only have two lanes, there is no way to safely navigate people around the work here.”

Traffic during the daytime hours of 5 a.m. until 7 p.m. should not be affected, he said.

Sena directs drivers to the DOT/PF hotline at (907) 376-9001 for more information. It is a recording, but if a caller leaves a message, Sena said he will personally call him or her back.

Contact Todd L. Disher at todd.disher@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.