There’s been a lot of road work going on round here lately.
They have finally finished and opened – without a hint of hoopla, by the way, it just was open one day – the replacement for the Prospect St. bridge. It now runs from the end of Stevens St. at Prospect over the Erie Canal and lines up with High St. at State St. It’s really quite convenient for me and much better trafic flow than the old bridge at Prospect that teed into State St. right in front of the Diamond Bar.
They started working on it last year and we all watched to see any activity for most of the Summer. The steel finally went up and then they worked on it at a snail’s pace for what seemed like forever.
We also have repaving going on on West Ave. They tore up the pavement on one section about a quarter-mile long. Then paved it with the rough under layer. Then they left it. Left the lanes blocked down to one in each direction. And meanwhile started tearing up the next section to the east. I wonder why they leave lanes closed while nothing is being worked on. But today, they are digging up a piece of the just-fininshed section and pulling out some old railroad tracks. Shouldn’t that have been done first?
Transit St. is also under construction. They are allegedly going to widen it from just south of the Lockport Plaza to Summit Street so that a center left turn lane can be put in. To do this they are taking a few feet of the west side of the road away from the front yards there. Unfortunately, this is where all the trees were. Of course, the same thing happened. A lot of activity to block a lane off, make a big mess with chopping the trees down, then it sits with nothing going on for days and days.
Why do they sart all these projects in the late summer and fall? Not a thing went on this spring. No one seems to know.
Hope they are done before the snow comes…
The Stevens Street bridge is quite convenient. Although I don’t drive i can see the pain in the ass that West Avenue has become. Hopefully when its all done (which about a month after this original post was made it appears like little progress has been made) it will be more efficient. Living at that intersection I’ve seen a fair share of accidents. Perhaps the new lane will accomodate the retards who need to learn how to drive properly.
The thing about the Transit deal is that they removed the trees all the way up the road. As a pedestrian, in the summer those trees provided a lot of well needed shade, now they are not there and come next summer, I will not be able to walk that stretch of road without sweating myself to nothing. Not to mention the “decision tree” is gone. If you walked that stretch of sidewalk, you know what tree I’m talking about. It was a mammoth tree placed right in the way of the sidewalk, so to accomodate the tree they built the sidewalk around the tree in both directions. Thus when you came upon it, you had to make a decision, left or right?. Now its just straight. Being a walker, i looked forward to that tree, and I’d often use it as a marking point to meet up with other people meeting me on that stretch of road. “Meet me by the Decision Tree” now its “Meet me by that hole.” I hate this city sometimes.
Oh, and you know it won’t get done until spring.