Springtime is the right time for highway construction
Oregon Department of Transportation gears up for another full slate of projects
By Larry Meyer
Argus Observer
Monday, March 24, 2008 10:19 AM PDT
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| A truck rolls under the Stanton Boulevard overpass Friday afternoon. The overpass will be closed May 1 for repairs. Detour routes will be marked. |
ONTARIO - The highway construction season has arrived and several area projects — most of them on Interstate 84 — will affect local motorists during the next few months.
Crews are already beginning preliminary work for the 2008 construction season on the North Ontario Interchange project, Oregon Department of Transportation Project Manager Paul Woodworth said.
“There is not a lot of action,” he said.
Work is mainly focused on the new bridge over the freeway where workers are tying rebar in preparation to pouring the bridge deck, which should happen sometime in May, he said.
Meanwhile, motorists have only about one more week before a contractor working on the I-84 bridges over the Snake River will shift westbound traffic to the eastbound bridge for two-way passage until fall, ODOT Public Information Officer Tom Strandberg said.
The lane switch will be made April 1.
The eastbound bridge was repaired and some sections of the span were replaced last year.
Contractors will now turn their attention to the westbound bridge.
With one-lane traffic, and narrower lanes, in both directions over the Snake River, trucks carrying loads wider than 12 feet will be detoured around the work zone using U.S. Highway 95 and U.S. Highway 30 through Gayway Junction.
Starting May 1, crews will close the Stanton Boulevard bridge over I-84 for 30 days for repairs, Strandberg said. Signs will direct traffic to detour routes.
Other area highways will also be the focus of construction work, Woodworth said.
“We will be doing a little bit of paving on Highway 201 (north of the I-84 interchange),” he said. Another project coming up is a 60-mile chipseal project on U.S. Highway 95, in the Jordan Valley area.
Motorists traveling down I-84 through Oregon will see other bridge projects along with way, including some close to Huntington.
ODOT contractors will close the eastbound I-84 off-ramp to Lime, at exit 342, starting today and it will remain closed until 2010 for bridge work. Traffic at that interchange will be reduced to one lane in each direction with each lane restricted to 19 feet in width. That will allow workers to removed the bridge at the interchange and replace it, one half at a time.
The bridge at the Rye Valley interchange will undergo repairs and will be reduced to one-lane traffic for brief periods, from July to September. The eastbound on-ramp at the interchange will be closed for six to nine months, with a traffic detour in place beginning in June.
Also, a bridge on U.S. Highway 30, between Huntington and I-84 will be replaced, and alternating one-way traffic will be controlled by a stoplight. A 1,500-foot section of U.S. 30 will be shifted west 10 feet to accommodate the construction which scheduled to take place from now through October 2009.
