PORT ANGELES — Get ready for detours and noise next week if you do nighttime driving on Lincoln Street or live downtown.
An $850,000, two-week state road project on the city’s main north-south street, which is part of U.S. Highway 101, will include five days of paving and some nighttime grinding.
Preliminary work begins Monday, but the noisy part — the grinding of pavement — will occur the week of June 16, the state Department of Transportation says.
The only alternative to pavement grinding at night was tying up traffic through that area during the day, said Jerry Moore of Transportation’s Port Angeles office.
Transportation had to obtain permission from the city Board of Adjustment for nighttime grinding, which will create sounds in excess of the city’s noise ordinance.
City Engineering Supervisor Gary Kenworthy said the noise variance was granted for 30 days with no restrictions on the hours it could be done.
The equipment used by contractor Lakeside Industries of Port Angeles emits more of a steady humming sound than loud grinding, Moore said.
Grinding work will focus on Lincoln Street between Lauridsen Boulevard and Ninth Avenue and part of the intersection of First and Lincoln streets.
Roadwork route
The affected route is only two miles long, but it carries as many as 13,000 vehicles per day, which adds a lot of wear and tear.
Work will begin Monday at the south end of U.S. Highway 101 at the Tumwater Truck Route interchange, said Rick Rodlend, Transportation’s field supervisor in the Port Angeles office.
It will travel east past Cherry Street where the highway becomes Lauridsen Boulevard.
When the work reaches Lincoln Street, it will turn north and follow Lincoln — the U.S. 101 route — through to the Front Street intersection.
Once specific detours are established, signs and flaggers will direct drivers, but traffic west of Cherry Street probably will be diverted down Tumwater Truck Route to Marine Drive, then east to First Street, which becomes U.S. 101 eastbound at Lincoln Street.
Preliminary work
Preliminary work, such as replacing curbs and lowering manholes and catch basins, will done during the day and night, Lakeside project manager George Peabody said.
Businesses along the route will be notified when the preliminary work begins, Peabody said.
Daytime work, from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., will primarily be confined to the shoulders of the two-lane road
Nighttime work, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., will include the main travel lanes.
Nighttime work will reduce Lincoln to one lane.
Peabody said while the grinding is being done, drivers will travel on ground-up asphalt during the day.
The ground asphalt surface won’t be as hard on vehicle suspensions as a rutted gravel road and won’t be as threatening to windshields as chipsealing, he said.
No parking zones
While the grinding is being done, the city will put up barricades marking the curbsides as no-parking zones, Peabody said.
No daytime work will disrupt traffic, but some road surface will be bumpy, Rodlend said.
While the new asphalt is being applied, businesses along the route will be inaccessible until the asphalt cools enough to drive across, Peabody said.
Businesses will be notified as the project moves up the route, he said.
No work will be done over the weekend, so the project could extend into the following week if it doesn’t begin on Monday, Peabody said.
But it will be completed before July 4, he said.
After the paving is done, Lakeside will need about two days to stripe the pavement and another two days to raise the manholes and catch basins.
$614,000 total cost
The project on Lauridsen Boulevard and Lincoln Street will cost $614,000.
It will be the second major U.S. 101 paving project in the Port Angeles area.
Lakeside is repaving the highway from Morse Creek east to Old Olympic Highway in a $1.2 million project that has narrowed travel lanes and slowed traffic during the past two weeks.
Lakeside will also pave an 11.9-mile link of state Highway 112 from Neah Bay to the Hoko River Bridge. That project, to cost about $1 million, is scheduled to begin in August, depending on weather.