More progress on Melville

When we last visited the Melville Street project, the workers were installing gutters using a special gutter-creating machine. Since then they have poured more concrete, most of it for the transitions from the street to driveways. For this work they do not use any special machines. They use boards as forms to contain the concrete, they pour it, and they then smooth it. If there were small boys around, they would probably be putting their footprints and intials in it.

On the north end of the project, they redid a driveway that was featured on an earlier post. The construction destroyed a lot of the driveways and entrances to the street points, so now they are being repaired.

 

The street level is different from what it had been in the past and you can see that difference in the picture above. Here the new street level is below the old street level. Near the railroad tracks the street level is higher than it previously was. The approach to the railroad tracks does not have the little hill at the end that it previously had. However, that change in street level is a problem for one of the business owners there. Where before he had level driveways to his building, he now has very steep and perhaps unusable driveways. He is not happy about it.

 The north part of the street has had a layer of asphalt for several weeks. On November 19 the first layer of asphalt was put on the rest of the street, starting at the Maple Street intersection and going south to the railroad tracks.

 

They had just gotten started when I jogged by.

 

Off to the side there was a queue of dump trucks loaded with asphalt waiting to supply the paving machine.

This is the view looking south from the Maple Street intersection a day or two later. I found a city employee who was checking out the work and asked when they would re-open the street. He was not sure. He said the original plans were to apply the final layer of asphalt next spring, but the contractor was checking weather reports to see if it might be possible to finish it this year. Apparently winter is not a good time to be doing road work. (Have you noticed how many streets were repaved in October?)

I hope my next post on the Melville Street project will be the last. If I am lucky, I will catch them finishing the street with a final layer of asphalt.