Last minute paving on southbound I-5 in Everett is finished, eliminating the possibility that people would drive on a rough road the entire winter, say state officials.
“We were saved by a good stretch of dry weather,” said Ryan Bianchi, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation. “Like we said before, we were going to be out there every night that was dry. Fortunately we had a string of dry nights, and we were able to get a lot of work done.”
It was dry enough for paving to take place Monday and Wednesday nights, and then to finish the work Thursday night, he said, a big break considering that the initial forecast was that many of those nights could have been too wet to pave.
Paving was supposed to finish in mid-September, but too many rainy nights prevented the work from getting done on time, Bianchi said. On top of not being able to pave in the rain, workers cannot lay blacktop when the temperature drops to 45 degrees. That’s a threshold that workers were rapidly approaching as they finished up work Thursday night.
Paving on the shoulders is expected to continue over the next four days, said Mike Cotten, the DOT’s project director.
Nighttime lane closures start at 9:30 p.m. and sometimes all but one lane will be closed by 11:30 p.m., lane closures that nighttime drivers in Everett have had to cope with since the I-5 widening project in Everett started.
Last weekend, the state extended the hours it allowed workers to pave, allowing extra paving to take place, but also causing four-mile backups on the freeway.
“We don’t have to do any more extra closures, no more long backups,” Bianchi said. “It’s just the normal nightly backups.”
Concrete paving will be done later in the winter, as the state continues with its ongoing effort to widen I-5 in Everett, Bianchi said. That work can be done at colder temperatures, he said.
The new asphalt will be striped with new lines over the next few weeks, making the road easier to see, Bianchi said. But beware, there will be lane shifts and restriping as the state moves ahead with the freeway widening project this winter.
Reporter Lukas Velush: 425-339-3449 or lvelush@heraldnet.com.
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