The paving of State Route 14 through Bingen, White Salmon, and Stevenson starts next Tuesday night, July 5, near the turnoff for SR 141 Alternate (the Underwood Cut-off).
According to the Washington State Department of Transportation’s SW Region Office, contractor Granite Construction will be laying a short stretch of asphalt on the first night to test the pavement mix.
“We want to make sure the mix is right and see how it holds up overnight before we do any longer stretches,” said SW Region Communications Manager Bart Treece on Monday.
The paving-and-striping project is costing WSDOT $1.4 million on top of the $5.2 million it spent on last year’s SR 14 chip-sealing project.
“It’s the same contract,” Treece said. “We just added this [work] to the 2015 contract because it was still open.”
Treece said most of the work will be performed at night. All told, about four miles of SR 14 through the Columbia Gorge will be paved and striped.
By paving at night, Treece noted, WSDOT “will be able to allow traffic on it in a few hours.”
The anticipated outcome of the project, according to Treece, is “a smoother ride...for drivers on State Route 14” through the Gorge.
Next Tuesday, SR 14 traffic will alternate through a single lane west of White Salmon, near the Under-wood Cut-off, from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.
The next two nights, crews will be working in Stevenson.
Additional nighttime paving and striping work will be scheduled near Bingen in mid-July.
Granite resurfaced SR 14 last year using a liquid-asphalt mixture and crushed gravel “to fill in cracks and create a watertight bond to protect the highway,” Treece said.
Over the winter, he added, WSDOT observed that portion of the re-sealed highway “were not holding up well, resulting in loose rocks on the roadway.”
Then came the fiery oil train derailment in Mosier on June 3. That incident resulted in the closure of Interstate 84 in both directions and the detour of traffic onto SR 14.
Hot weather combined with heavy truck traffic that day caused the oil on the road to reactivate and become pliable. Portions of the highway were peeled away, leaving pock marks in the road.
“There are portions of the road in unacceptable condition, marked with fresh potholes and loose rocks,” said WSDOT Asst. Project Engineer Jonathan Abuyan. “We appreciate the patience from the public while we work to make this right.”
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