The Oak Ridge Public Works Department plans to resurface the following city streets beginning Tuesday, September 23:
- Alder Lane
- Amanda Drive from Adelphi Road to dead end
- East and West Arrowwood Road
- Balboa Circle
- Baltimore Drive from Emory Valley Road to Baylor Drive
- Baylor Drive
- Briarcliff Avenue from Danbury Drive to South Columbia Drive
- Briarcliff Avenue from South Columbia Drive to Emory Valley Road
- Daniel Lane
- Endicott Lane
- Fairbanks Road from Warehouse Road to Emory Valley Road
- Florida Avenue from Outer Drive to Tennessee Avenue
- Northwestern Avenue from Rutgers Avenue to Gettysburg Avenue
- ORAU Way
- Phillips Lane
- Potomac Circle
- Robertsville Road from East Melbourne Road to Bradley Avenue
- Robertsville Road from Mississippi Avenue to Louisiana Avenue
- Scenic Drive
- Wakefield Road
- Wakeman Lane
The city’s contractor, Rogers Group, will perform various types of milling work on many of the streets prior to the resurfacing. “Wedge” milling will be performed on some of the streets receiving the conventional resurfacing in order for the new pavement surface to match up with the bordering curb and gutter, a press release said. “Whole width” milling will be done on a few of the streets receiving the conventional resurfacing in order to remove a deteriorated and older overlay allowing for the new pavement to closer match up with the curb and gutter surface.
Residents of the streets being milled and/or resurfaced should receive a notice advising them to have all vehicles removed from the street by 7 a.m. on the day of the scheduled milling and/or resurfacing. Citizens should expect multiple inconveniences due to various phases of the paving operation, the press release said.
Residents planning on being out of town during the resurfacing period are advised to move their vehicles off of the street before they leave. Vehicles remaining on the street on the day of the work are subject to being towed. After receiving the notice, residents should not park their vehicles on the streets until after the work has been completed, the release said.
The schedule could change based upon weather.
“The Public Works Department apologizes for any inconvenience this work may cause area residents,” the release said.
Residents with any questions or comments can call the Public Works Department at (865) 425-1875.
Philip W Nipper says
John, back in the day, The Oak Ridger had a column titled “Ask Inky” where readers could write in and ask “Inky” questions. Most questions concerned civic issues and general questions regarding area history, city rules and regulations etc. Also, readers sometimes asked further reaching questions like “what ever happened to the Hager twins from the TV show Hee Haw” or is ham or turkey more popular at Thanksgiving. It would be nice if you too had such a service. Call it what you like. Maybe Ask Pinky or Ask Stinky or Dinky. Anything but Inky. You get the picture. Anyway, if you had such a service, my first question regarding this notice from the city and street re-surfacing would be: Why is Manhattan Ave not on the list? OMG! It was re-surfaced a few years ago. But its current condition is not much better than it was before re-surfacing. You can add Providence Road and Broadway to the “why not me” list as well. My second question would be; What’s the deal with the road stripping in this town? Turn arrows, stop bars, fog lines, center lines, etc are disappearing throughout the city. Why are lines not repainted BEFORE they become a safety issue? So, “Pinky”. How about it?
johnhuotari says
Philip,
I apologize for the delayed response.
I’m willing to consider your proposal as long as it doesn’t require a lot of extra work. I think it’s safe to say that I’m “maxed out” right now. 🙂 I’ll have to see if I can come up with an easy-to-implement and easy-to-use system to do this.
But I do periodically field reader questions anyway, so maybe I could figure out a way to incorporate that behind-the-scenes dialogue into our website. For example, I recently did a little research on a few recent power outages in Briarcliff, and the city’s work to replace underground electrical cables there section by section. Now that you mention it, what I learned could be of interest to other readers as well, in addition to the person who initially inquired about the utilities.
Thanks for the suggestion.
John
Philip W Nipper says
Thanks John. I believe your readers would enjoy having such a system as part of Oak Ridge Today.
Ellen Smith says
Good questions, Phil.
I can’t answer your questions with any authority, but I can suggest that some streets that need repaving might not be on the list because they are scheduled to get torn up for sewer projects or other construction. For example, Broadway is likely to be messed up by planned construction at Jackson Square, as well as the active project at the Alexander Inn. No point in repaving it until after those projects are done.
I also have a guess regarding road striping. Several years ago, City Council added a road-striping machine to the city budget (at a cost of about $15,000) after we (mostly Charlie Hensley and I) learned that it is very expensive to pay a contractor to do any striping that crosses traffic lanes (because contractors wanted to come to town and do all the necessary striping in a short time, which doesn’t allow for closing off streets one lane at a time). We learned that if the city had its own modest-sized striping machine, the public works staff could do striping for crosswalks, stop bars, turn arrows, etc., when they weren’t tied up with other work — and save the city a bundle of money on contracting. My guess is that the public works staff have been too busy with work related to sewer projects, so striping has been neglected.
Having stuck my neck out with guesses, I’ll be interested to hear the true story…
Philip W Nipper says
Ellen, thanks for the info. Regarding the striping issue, I seem to recall that at one time, not too long ago, there was an issue with a striping paint shortage. Hopefully that is no longer a problem. I too will be interested in learning the true story…..