East Erie Avenue to get new pavement

Underground repairs cause delay for fresh asphalt

Underground repairs are making the U.S. Route 6 resurfacing project last longer than expected on East Erie Avenue in Lorain, officials said.

This summer and fall, Chagrin Valley Paving Inc. is resurfacing Route 6, which is Erie Avenue in Lorain. It is one of the city’s main east-west thoroughfares.

The old asphalt has been ground off the top of East Erie Avenue, from the Charles Berry Bascule Bridge to Lorain’s eastern city limit, for several weeks. On Oct. 23, crews will begin putting down the new layer of asphalt to smooth out the roadway, said Crystal Neelon, public information officer for the District 3 Office of the Ohio Department of Transportation.

The project completion date has been pushed back from Oct.

23 into November. The work should be finished by Thanksgiving, Nov. 23, she said.

Once crews mill the top asphalt from the road surface, usually they try to put down the new surface within two weeks, Neelon said.

It has taken longer than that on East Erie Avenue due to necessary repairs below the road surface, said Neelon and Lorain City Engineer Dale Vandersommen.

The work is necessary, although Vandersommen acknowledged the city Engineering Department has gotten some complaints about the bumpy roadway of East Erie Avenue in recent days.

“A lot of people have indicated that they think it’s been an excessive amount of delay between the milling and the paving,” he said.

Lorain Safety-Service Director Dan Given also said the administration has been getting a number of calls from people anxious to get the road paved.

“I have been explaining to many of them that there were some unexpected underground utilities issues we wanted to fix before paving over these broken pipes,” Given said.

The subsurface repairs are needed for the new roadway to have a good foundation. If crews did not fix the problem, the fresh asphalt would collapse and it would need another repair anyway, Vandersommen and Neelon said.

“It’s never a good look when you’re cutting open brand new pavement,” Vandersommen said.

The problems may stem from collapsed storm sewers or sanitary sewers underground. Sometimes the defects in the road foundation are not apparent until crews begin taking off the pavement, Neelon said.

There were at least a half dozen subsurface repairs needed and performed by Chagrin Valley Paving. City utility workers also had to repair three sanitary sewer laterals that collapsed in three places under East Erie Avenue, Vandersommen said.

ODOT is overseeing the $3.3 million project. The city of Lorain will pay for the underground repairs.

On Broadway and on West Erie Avenue from the Charles Berry Bridge west to Leavitt Road, crews on Oct. 20 continued to pour concrete around manholes, catch basins and water valves to ensure they are at the same grade of the new asphalt, Neelon said.

The subsurface repairs are needed for the new roadway to have a good foundation.

RICHARD PAYERCHIN — THE MORNING JOURNAL Orange barrels and markers guard the sewer covers near the intersection of Erie Avenue and Broadway as Lorain City Hall sits in the background.