By Jon King/jking@whmi.com


Repairs to the bridge deck on the M-36 overpass at US-23 forced the closure of the on-ramps Tuesday in Green Oak Township.

The east and westbound on-ramps from M-36 to US-23 were closed to traffic between 9am and 4pm for emergency repairs after a hole was discovered in the bridge deck. A short stretch of southbound US-23 was also closed for the repair.

MDOT Communications Representative Jocelyn Hall tells WHMI that they frequently monitor the conditions of bridge decks to make sure there are no immediate issues that need to be addressed. They found a patch that needed to be fixed immediately as it was the kind of pavement issue on a bridge deck they would want to respond to as quickly as possible.

As to what may have caused the issue, Hall said that outside of aging infrastructure as a whole, there weren’t any indicators to answer that question definitively.