Rainfall is replacing sunny weather, but Summit County is continuing the renovation projects on Kilby Road.
KPCW spoke to project manager John Angell, who said the county made progress Wednesday paving the widened bike lanes on Kilby.
“luckily yesterday it didn’t rain like they were planning. So, we got most of the bike asphalt widening done. Tomorrow we’ll probably come through and have a little bit of flagging going on while we shoulder that so there’s not a lip where the asphalt is at.”
Angell said at the moment, traffic delays are minimal.
“We’ve been able to keep most of the traffic to a block or two to one lane. Except for rush hour, like when school starts and gets out it only backs up a few cars. it backs up further but it’s only a minute or two that it takes to get through.”
The project list includes an underpass from the Ecker Hill park n ride lot over to the Ecker campus itself. Angell said that work has its challenges.
“There’s a lot of concrete to go on that to get the ramps and everything. We’re going to put a canopy over the ramps so that it’s protected from the weather. That has been a long process for us. It kind of got changed a little later in the design process so we didn’t really get started on that until the end of August. Although we really couldn’t have because we had a lot of utilities that we had to move and relocate so we could so that we could get that in there. That is a lot of what caused it and then it’s just a slow process. It’s hard to work in a tiny area and keep traffic going. I know traffic gets tired of us but its hard to work around traffic also.”
Angell said they hope to have all the concrete work done on the tunnel by early December.
He added they believe that Kilby should be open to traffic by the end of the month.
“We’re hoping that we can pave Kilby Road—right now we have it scheduled for October 22nd. Then we’re hoping that we can stage in the parking lot and only have to cross Kilby and delay traffic minimally. While we get from one side because there’s balls on either side of Kilby road. We may have to pack stuff back and forth. We’re hoping that we can do that so we’re hoping by the end of the month we can open up Kilby and have the detour going.”
He said almost all the paving on the park n ride lot should be completed by December.
“We’re going to pave all but right next to the underpass a week from Monday. We’re hoping to have bus service to the parking lot and it open by the first part of December.”
Project Manager John Angell. On one other note, the county reported that the Tanger Roundabout was having problems with the concrete installation, which will put the work about two weeks behind schedule.
