Traffic was light, as usual at 8:24 p.m. on Sunday, but moving freely across the Ellsworth Street Bridge. The bridge was to have been closed for construction at that time.
The long-anticipated night work to raise cross beams on the Ellsworth Street Bridge in Albany did not start Sunday night as ODOT had announced. Today, Monday, ODOT explained why.
“The contractor ran into some staffing issues,” said Mindy McCartt, the ODOT spokeswoman for this region. “The work is now scheduled to start on April 1.”
The contractor is Wildish Standard Paving Co., of Eugene. The company’s bid for the job was about $4.5 million.
For weeks and still last week, ODOT said the bridge would be closed weeknights and traffic would be rerouted over the Lyon Street Bridge starting at 8 p.m. Sunday, March 24.
Then, on Friday, a reader board on Lyon Street downtown said the nighttime work on Ellsworth would start on April 1 instead.
Sunday night, the reader board was dark, making me wonder whether the April 1 date had also been canceled, but apparently not.
The Ellsworth closure is supposed to be taking place from 8 p.m. until 6 a.m. weeknights. During those hours, flaggers are to guide traffic over the Lyon Bridge detour.
None of that was going on Sunday night, and no preparations were visible to get the detour started soon. (hh)
This is an updated version of a story posted Sunday night.
Typical
Todays mail brought a slick flyer from ODOT advising to “Plan Ahead” Being optimistic I entered http://direc.to/kWvo and got NOTHING.
PLAN AHEAD??????????? Way to go ODOT
DH has different link – that does work…
https://www.oregon.gov/odot/projects/pages/project-details.aspx?project=20428
While they are raising the beams why don’t they install a reader board on top of the bridge with lights on it.( heavy traffic, wreck ahead, bridge closed, etc.) Like they have in bigger cities to get on I-5 for flow of traffic. I have been on the backend of the line and 45 minutes waiting to get across. Or build another bridge where it meets up with hill st. Or crosses over down by talking waters. They would rather spend millions on attracting out of towners for Monteith Park. Which will back traffic up in downtown even more than it already is. I lived here most of my life and traffic downtown is always an issue