Commuters, rejoice! Midland Avenue lane closures to end, easing traffic backup downtown
Lexington commuters will get at least some relief at the end of this week, as Midland Avenue and Short Street will reopen with no lane restrictions by the end of the day on Friday. The construction to put a sewer pipe underneath the street began in October and was scheduled to be finished by December, but has been fraught with delays.
The latest delay was due to an issue with the paving company, according to Charlie Martin, director of Lexington’s Division of Water Quality.
“The first round of paving on outbound Midland Avenue was not satisfactory,” Martin said. “The contractor agreed and so they’re back redoing it, that’s what they should be working on this week if not today.”
Previous delays in the project had been due to rainy weather, which pushed the target date for the end of the project to June, before the current paving issue moved it back further, according to Martin.
“There was some unexpected circumstances in digging the last part of it,” Martin said. “Where we encountered some things that we didn’t necessarily count on. Most importantly though is that they wanted us to redo and restripe the bike lane part on Main Street and so, you noticed that we had it done once and we came back and remilled it and repaved it again, basically narrowing one of the lanes to provide a more substantial bike lane for the inbound into downtown.”
One change from the original project plan: Traffic-control islands at the intersection of Midland and Short were originally set to be removed. However, Martin said that any changes to the intersection will be made at a later date, as part of a future Lexington project.
“My understanding is that intersection is going to become signalized when Town Branch Commons comes through there,” Martin said. “Originally we were going to remove all of that because Town Branch Commons was going to be right behind it. Now that that has been delayed, all we’re doing is basically putting back what was there. We didn’t want to put something else in there and then have them go back in and tear it all back out again.”
The Town Branch Commons project is a park and trail system that will connect Town Branch Trail and Legacy Trail, giving the city 22 miles of connected trail. The project is estimated to cost $39.5 million from a variety of funding sources including $11.8 million in local dollars according to the project website. Ground was broken in July 2018 and is scheduled for completion in 2021 or 2022.
When the sewer project began in May of 2018, Martin warned that it would cause headaches for Lexington residents, saying that the project was “going to get dicey.”