Each week during the construction season, The Blade’s Road Warrior highlights the major construction projects in Toledo and the surrounding area, noting where delays are worst and where the best alternative routes are. This column’s regular format, with the map, will return next week.
Monday is the day, we’ve been promised, that a second inbound lane will reopen on the Anthony Wayne Trail between Western Avenue and Collingwood Boulevard following more than two years of single-lane traffic during construction.
Assuming it happens, it will certainly be relief for commuters. But it also could have happened last week.
I asked the Ohio Department of Transportation why the inbound side had to remain a single lane last week after the barrier wall was taken down and traffic was shifted from the right lane to the center lane.
Spokesman Rebecca Dangelo said the right lane remained closed because workers needed to occupy it to finishing work along that side of the roadway. When I asked why the left lane couldn’t be open during that time, she didn’t respond.
ODOT already stuck Trail motorists with single-lane traffic for 19 months longer than was originally scheduled and almost a year longer than was necessary even under the revised plan after railroad delays held up the project’s first phase. So what’s another week, I guess?
As far as I can tell from driving through the zone, the left lane was kept closed all week because that’s the way it will be while contractor Miller Brothers Construction takes crossovers out and otherwise restores the roadway median now that the new bridge over Norfolk Southern railroad tracks near City Park Avenue is finished.
But none of that left-side work was going on last week. When the barrier wall was removed, newly painted lane stripes direct the right and center lanes to cross over to the left and center at the north end of the work zone. So a little bit of paint was the real reason the left lane stayed closed.
In the interest of disclosure: My normal commute uses this part of the Trail. But while I haven’t had to commute much for the past three months, I still see from occasional driving that the inbound backups have returned, especially in the afternoons.
Elsewhere, the LaPlaisance Road bridge over I-75 at Exit 11 in Monroe County remained closed over the weekend more than two months after it closed for what the Michigan Department of Transportation described as an emergency assessment.
Looking at it from underneath, it’s not hard to imagine why it was shut down. MDOT says it’s scheduled for replacement next year but will reopen temporarily before then with one-way traffic and a weight restriction. They just don’t seem to be in much of a hurry to do that — or say when it might happen.
The latest development in the I-75 reconstruction project between Dorr Street and Glenwood Road is work on South Avenue near its I-75 interchange that will close the south end of Sumner Street.
Sumner will be closed to traffic between South and Knower Street for four weeks starting Monday, while a flag zone will be set up on South.
Also, Miami Street will be closed at I-75 on Wednesday and Thursday nights while bridge beams are set. The scheduled work hours will be 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. The closest alternative for crossing the freeway is Wales Road. All I-75 ramps at Miami will remain open.
And on I-280, the Veterans’ Glass City Skyway, already reduced to two lanes each way, will have additional lane and ramp closings during the daytime for its annual inspection and nighttime left-lane closings for concrete pours. Local traffic should use the Craig Memorial Bridge instead.
First Published July 6, 2020, 4:00 a.m.
