U.S. 6 to get new asphalt

Broadway Avenue smoothed out with new blacktop

After several weeks of bumpier than usual conditions, Lorain’s east-west coastal road is ready for new asphalt.

Several weeks ago, crews from Chagrin Valley Paving Inc. ground off the top layers of asphalt of U.S. Route 6 from Leavitt Road to the Black River. Then they took off the top coat of the road from the river to Lorain’s eastern border with Sheffield Lake.

Now the crews aim to put down fresh blacktop by the end of the week.

“That sounds a little aggressive to me,” said Lorain City Engineer Dale Vandersommen on Sept. 26. “That’s not a lot of time to get this done.”

The possibility of finishing by the end of the week came from a superintendent in the city Utilities Department, who spoke to paving crew members, Vandersommen said.

The official project end date is Oct. 23 and the project is on track for that, said Kaitlyn Maynard, public information officer for the Ohio Department of Transportation’s District 3 Office. The state transportation agency is overseeing the Lorain work.

This week, the crews will put down asphalt west of the Charles Berry Bascule Bridge, then move east of the bridge in the next week and a half, Maynard said.

The project is going as smoothly as a resurfacing project ODOT has planned, said Maynard, who spoke to the ODOT project manager for the work.

When the pavement is ground off, raised castings for drains and patches stick up higher than the road surface, causing a bumpy ride. The city Engineering Department has sent three driver complaints along to ODOT, Vandersommen said.

It appeared drivers were getting tired of the bumpy road conditions that could damage cars.

A Morning Journal staff member spotted a coil spring, with a plastic housing on it, on West Erie Avenue just past the west side of Lakeview Park.

It appeared the spring could have come from a compact car, said John Muzik of Muzik Bros. Auto Care, 704 W. Erie Ave. If the spring was attached to a mounting plate that sheared off, it could have come off a car while the car was in motion, Muzik said. Or, it could have fallen off the back of a scrap metal collector’s truck.

“The world will never know,” he said.

But in the last few weeks, it appeared West Erie Avenue had fewer and fewer drivers as more people detoured through Lorain to avoid the rough road. On Sept. 27, Muzik said the last week was the slowest of the year for him.

“Remember how I said it wouldn’t hurt me? It hurt me,” he said about the project. Muzik also was surprised to learn Broadway was milled after West Erie Avenue, but resurfaced before West Erie Avenue.

The east-west road also could have used more signs warning drivers to slow down and be aware of manhole covers sticking up above the road surface, Muzik said.

On a project this size, it would be unheard of to not get complaints from drivers, Maynard said. The Route. 6 project did not stand out as having an excessive number of complaints, she added.

“Our pavement plans are completed, so they actually started resurfacing this morning on Broadway,” Maynard said on Sept. 26.

By 4 p.m. that day, crews were smoothing out a new layer of asphalt on Broadway from 10th Street to West Erie Avenue.

Crews previously resurfaced state Route 57, which is Broadway in Lorain. The section from 10th Street to West Erie Avenue was delayed until this year while ODOT and city officials considered whether a new streetscape project would be included in the work.

A dump truck fed hot asphalt into a motorized paver that set down the new road surface.

Then three steel drum rollers, which ride on giant metal cylinders, rode back and forth to compact the fresh asphalt.

Those three implements look similar in size and appearance, but each has a different function, said a worker at the job site. A breakdown roller first goes over the hot asphalt, then an intermediate roller, and finally a finish roller to flatten and compact the blacktop.

“That’s the one that makes the job look pretty,” the worker said. He pointed out three cut marks, or lines left in the road surface that marked the edge the compacting cylinders of the breakdown and intermediate rollers.

“When he’s done, those won’t be there,” the worker said.