SWANTON — For most of the past six months, embankments have risen for the new Hallett Avenue bridge over the Norfolk Southern Corp. railroad tracks through town, and visitors to the Swanton Library have had no trouble following the project’s progress: It’s right down the street.
“I think it’s going to make a great sledding hill, don’t you?” Gail Phipps, a librarian who lives in town, joked last week while noting that the construction has become a regular topic of conversation at the library.
And although the region’s record rainfall during 2011 — 48.79 inches at Toledo Express Airport broke Toledo’s 61-year mark by nearly an inch — put many area highway projects months behind schedule, the Ohio Department of Transportation says the Hallett project remains on track for opening to traffic late next year, with overall completion in 2013.
“It’ll be nice to be able to cross the tracks without the trains,” said Robert Snyder of Delta, an employee of the Swanton post office who visits the library with his wife, Annette, to use the Internet.
The frequent trains — often 70 or more a day — are the reason that Swanton put its firehouse and ambulance garage on opposite sides of the tracks, said Mr. Snyder, whose brother’s house was bought out for part of the embankment.
Theresa Pollick , a spokesman for the transportation department, said the reason for the construction’s schedule-keeping is simple: time. And good timing may not have hurt, either.
Miller Brothers Construction, the contractor, “began placing embankment material in July and did not finish until the beginning of November,” Ms. Pollick said. “Most of the work was completed during the week and a few weekends to make up weather days.”
Although all five of the construction months were wetter than normal, and November was the wettest in Toledo history, the early part of that period was only slightly above average for precipitation, and a drier-than-normal June gave Miller Brothers crews solid ground to start out with.
The wettest part of November, meanwhile, was the week after Thanksgiving, by which time the earth-moving was done.
Ms. Phipps said the late-November rain appeared to have caused some of the embankments’ dirt to wash down the slope.
Workers sprayed “fake grass” — actually a mix of seed and green-dyed fiber — onto the slope in December to try to stabilize it, she said.
The transportation department has blamed the year’s excessive rain for major delays to two other ongoing highway projects in the Toledo area.
The department announced Dec. 20 that the new U.S. 24 between Waterville and Napoleon will open in September instead of in July because of weather delays to embankment construction at the highway’s junction with existing U.S. 24 just north of Waterville.
Earlier, slow progress on the I-475 reconstruction project in West Toledo caused the department to push back until spring the reopening of that freeway’s westbound exit to Douglas Road. Although the eastbound Douglas entrance reopened Dec. 2, it is expected to close again in the spring for construction of a rain-delayed retaining wall.
Contact David Patch at: dpatch@theblade.com or 419-724-6094.
First Published January 2, 2012, 5:30 a.m.
