Work has begun on the new roundabout project in Jeffersonville which will drastically change the intersection of routes 15 and 108. Complicating the project, the massive, steel truss bridge on Route 108 which spans the Lamoille just north of the four-way intersection will be replaced at the same time.
A temporary bridge is being installed to provide a route across the river, and should be ready to handle traffic later this fall. The new bridge will open next summer.
According to the town of Cambridge’s Emergency Management Facebook page, “Traffic flow will only have minor interruptions during daylight operations and will be controlled with flaggers and traffic barrels.”
Two flaggers have already been deployed at either side of the intersection on Route 15, as well as another between the intersection and the bridge on Route 108, where the roadway has, at times, been reduced to one lane. Crews are preparing the new road that will lead traffic to the temporary bridge, as well building the temporary abutments for the span. Motorists have already begun experiencing minor delays.
St. Onge Inc. of Montgomery is the general contractor on the project. According to Artie St. Onge, a superintendent with the family-run construction company, the price tag for the repairs and upgrades comes in at just over $5.5 million.
G.W. Tatro of Jeffersonville, whose headquarters abuts the roundabout site, is participating in the project as well. “They’re [G.W. Tatro] subbing out the roundabout and some of the earthwork,” said St. Onge. “They’re doing everything to do with the roundabout, basically.”
St. Onge said his company is paying G.W. Tatro about $1.4 million for its part in the massive overhaul.
The project has been scheduled to unfurl in two stages, with a planned hiatus in operations over the winter. “This year we’re doing the storm drains,” said Gary Denton, a superintendent with G.W. Tatro. “And then, next spring we’ll be doing all curbs, black top, all the re-grading, and the sub-base.”
According to Denton, whose company built the roundabout on route 15 in Hyde Park, the roundabout in Jeffersonville will be a little bigger than the one down the road, and it will be centered on top of the old intersection. It will have a median in the middle similar to its counterpart.
Construction is currently on schedule. “Our big push right now is to have this (the detour to the temp bridge) paved before we put traffic on it, and the pavement plants shut down mid-November,” St. Onge said. The plan between now and the close of construction for the season is to open the detour bridge, remove the old one, and then construct the abutments for the new bridge.
When construction resumes in the spring, the focus will be on opening the roundabout and building the new bridge, which should be completed by August 2013.
A long-deferred repaving project on Route 108 from Jeffersonville to Bakersfield, a notoriously horrible stretch of pot-hole infested road, is reportedly scheduled for 2013 as well.
As for the bridge, the new structure won’t resemble the old one, though it will remain a two lane bridge. “There won’t be a sidewalk, but there will be a shoulder,” St. Onge said. “It looks like a new modern bridge.” St. Onge went on to say that it will resemble the bridge which leads Route 15 west out of Jeffersonville, and that it will have a gentle curve to it.
Farther west on Route 15 sits the legendary Wrong Way Bridge which also has a curve in it. The structure was infamously installed backwards, counter to the intentions of the architects and any sense of logic.
“We’re going to get this one the right way,” said St. Onge.
