BLAINE, Minn. – (Sept. 24, 2015) – After more than a year of construction, the orange cones on University Avenue will soon be a thing of the past. This roadway averages about 14,000 vehicles per day, and is a well traveled public transit route and school bus route. Since summer of 2014, the road has been under construction from 109th Avenue to 121st Avenue, but now drivers are in the home stretch and will soon be driving on a newer, safer roadway. “When we get done with it now it will be a four lane divided highway. We will be adding a couple signals. We’re going to have a signal at 111th, which was there already, we’re going to upgrade that signal. We’ll also be adding a signal at 113th and a signal at 117th. We’ll be redoing that one and at 121st,” said construction engineering supervisor Harry Grams.
The bridge over Coon Creek was one of the larger elements of the reconstruction project, and a lengthy sound wall has also been added along side the roadway. Near the beginning of the project, crews were faced with some unexpected delays once they started digging. “We have some mucking we encountered at our first stage of construction on the southbound lanes we uncovered about 60,000 yards of unwanted material that isn’t good for road bed material so we had to remove that. We are still encountering some as we’re working on the northbound lanes but we’re hoping that’s gonna be a slightly less number. So that delayed our time table for our project, it set us back a little bit,” said Grams.
Even with the delays, the road crews have been working hard to finish this project before winter comes. And Harry says that is hopeful that the weather will help them out. “Crews have been packing up, they’ve been working six days a week so we’re hoping. We may not have the job 100% complete this year but we’re pushing to get everybody on their respective sides for the winter completion and get everything done except the last layer of asphalt” said Grams. That last layer of asphalt would then be finished up after the snow melts in the spring.
