Road construction ramping up for summer
Drivers heading north to Chelan who plan to take Highway 97A Monday will encounter traffic slowdowns at the Knapps Hill tunnel north of Entiat. Maintenance and inspection work will require flagger-controlled traffic.
Work is scheduled from 7 a.m., with flagger control starting about 8 a.m., to 4 p.m. An alternate route is available on Highway 97 on the east side of the Columbia River.
One local project already is underway; crews are reconstructing a 2.1-mile section of Westshore Drive. As drivers on Westshore already know, the old road surface has been removed, road crews are building a new roadbed and subsurface drainage system. When that's completed Westshore will be repaved with sidewalks and gutters added.
Some sections have one-lane traffic and flagging for traffic control. There are detours using Road E Northeast and Road F Northeast.
The other major regional project is the second year of construction on the Vantage Bridge along Interstate 90. Traffic is reduced to one lane in each direction through May 23, the start of the Memorial Day weekend.
Speed in the construction zone is reduced to 40 miles per hour and loads more than nine feet wide are prohibited. Work on the bridge has resulted in traffic delays, particularly on Friday afternoons eastbound and Sunday afternoons westbound.
Both lanes across the bridge will remain open through the entire month of June, until July 8. In an earlier interview Summer Derrey, Washington Department of Transportation assistant communications manager for the South Central Region, said work on the bridge will be continuing during June, but won't affect travel.
After July 8, however, the bridge will go back to being one lane in each direction through the end of the construction season in late October. Derrey recommended people think about alternate routes.
Washington State Patrol Trooper Jeremy Weber, public information officer for WSP Region 6, said drivers should remember that sections of the detour routes aren't usually as busy as they will be this summer. Weber cited State Route 243 between the Vantage and Vernita bridges as an example.
"(State Route) 243 was never designed for the truck traffic that it has on it right now," Weber said. "They didn't anticipate so many heavy vehicles traveling that road on a daily basis."
One summer project is underway in Adams County. Construction on a section of the Lind-Hatton Road, about five miles north of State Route 26, started last fall and was resumed last week. There was a detour since the road was closed over the winter, but with construction starting up again the detour route has been changed. The new route uses some gravel roads.
Other projects are scheduled for later this summer. Repaving two sections of I-90, one between the Vantage Bridge and George and the second between Dodson Road to Mae Valley, was advertised for bid last week.
Rebuilding of a section of Schoonover Road about eight miles west of Ritzville is scheduled to start in June. So is the reconstruction of a section of Stratford Road from Road 20 Northeast to the BNSF railroad tracks.
Repaving of a section of Grape and Maple drives is scheduled for midsummer. Bren said that project could be in its finishing stages when the Moses Lake School District resumes classes in the fall.
A roundabout at the intersection of State Route 26 and South First Street in Othello is dependent on funding, said Sebastian Moraga, WSDOT communications consultant, in an earlier interview. The project has been advertised and if it's funded, construction would be scheduled for midsummer, Moraga said.
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