A series of unfortunate events surrounding State Route 14 in the Columbia Gorge is leading the Washington State Department of Transportation to schedule a contractor to come in and repair damage to the roadway.
The highway between Dalles-port and Stevenson took a heavy hit on June 3 when a Union Pacific train carrying crude oil derailed near Mosier. The derailment forced the closure of Oregon’s four-lane Interstate 84 in both directions and the detour of traffic onto Washing-ton’s two-lane SR 14.
WSDOT’s plan is grind out and repave those damaged portions of SR 14 through the communities of Stevenson and Bingen, starting just west of Cook-Underwood Road, according to the SW Region’s project engineer.
WSDOT engineer Susan Fell said the agency is working to get the repair work done as soon as possible. She said the SW Region is coordinating the work with its communications manager “to get out notifications as soon as plans are solidified.”
“We may not have much notice, though,” Fell noted. “Our plan is to start as soon as we get all our paperwork, which we are working to push through as fast as possible.”
Fell said the project could start as soon as the last week in June or as late as after the Fourth of July holiday.
The pavement damage on SR 14 in the Gorge, said Fell, was “due in part to the hot weather and heavy, slow-moving truck traffic that detoured from I-84” on June 3.
“Our chip-sealed roadway surface reacted badly under these circumstances,” Fell noted.
“It appears that the oil in the chip seal reactivated, became pliable, and stuck to vehicle tires,” she explained. “As a result, sections of oil and rock were pulled off the highway, leaving large areas of potholes.”
During the derailment-related closure, WSDOT maintenance crews applied sand to the roadway multiple times “to minimize the amount of chip seal that was pull-ed off the highway” by the stop-and-go traffic, Fell said.
SW Region Communications Manager Bart Treece called the breakdown of portions of SR 14 “a series of unfortunate events.”
He said WSDOT already was concerned about the condition of the highway in some areas; the events of June 3 only exacerbated its concern.
Treece said the highway started raveling in places along the route following last year’s chip-seal project and continued through the winter, much to WSDOT’s displeasure.
Asphalt raveling is the progressive disintegration of a hot mix asphalt layer from the surface downward as a result of the dislodgement of aggregate particles. Asphalt raveling results in loose debris on the pavement, roughness, and water collecting in the raveled locations, which can result in vehicle hydroplaning in wet weather or loss of skid resistance in hot weather.
The raveling, said Treece, will be addressed by the contractor who performed last year’s chip seal project and paid for by WSDOT.
“It’s clearly not an acceptable road condition in some areas,” Treece said. “The detoured traffic from I-84 didn’t help matters, but there were some things about the [2015] resurfacing job that we were not pleased with. This new project will address all of these issues.”
Commented