City in early stages of First Street repaving preparations – Fremont Tribune

Troy Schaben, interim city engineer, said the project will see repaving done on First Street from the intersection with North Main Street to Bell Street, then from the east side of Bell Street to Clarmar Avenue.

Schaben stressed that the intersection of Bell and First streets will remain fully open during the repaving project so as not to impact drivers after the mid-June reopening of the Bell Street viaduct/bridge.

“They started doing the (notification) fliers and everything today. The pavement (part of project) wasn’t supposed to start until the middle of July — July 15th or something like that. But now they’re checking sidewalks,” Schaben said. “We do a pre-walk through to make sure we know the condition of everything before we start. Sometimes people try to say we damage the sidewalks and stuff like that. We just want to make sure everything we’ve got on the plans is the way it is in the field, and we make sure we’re not missing a manhole or an inlet or something like that.”

The repaving project involves workers grinding down the existing pavement by about two inches and then repaving over the leveled surface with asphalt. The work will be done mostly with one lane of First Street closed, which Schaben said will allow traffic to continue to flow along the key east-west thoroughfare albeit with some delays.

In the weeks before the repaving begins, workers are also taking inventory of handicapped accessible cross walks, sewer manholes and also water valves to ensure that no critical infrastructure is missed or damaged, and if so, is repaired to its original status.

There could be times in the construction project when both lanes of First Street are closed for repaving.

“If they are going to do two lanes at once, we will send out public notices to residents at least 48 hours in advance and then when the paving is done, it will be in a short time window of two to three hours,” Schaben said of the rare times when both lanes of traffic may be closed.

“There will be periods where they’ll have to close everything down, but hopefully there won’t be more than a half a day at a time. The street will be open for most of that two-months of construction,” Schaben said. “There will only be small sections where it’s closed off.”

Traffic signals malfunctioning at two intersections

Schaben said two traffic signals — one at the intersection of Nye Avenue and 23rd Street and Somers Avenue and 23rd Street — are both broken and malfunctioning.

The intersection of Somers Avenue and 23rd Street has had temporary stop signs added to the intersection creating a mandatory four-way stop for all traffic, he said.

At Nye Avenue and 23rd Street, the traffic light signal has been switched to a flashing red for traffic in all directions, in essence also creating a four-way stop.

“It’s an old piece of equipment that we’re trying to get replaced. We’re kind of throwing parts at it until we can get new equipment. But that new equipment is months out on order and we can’t find parts for the old equipment,” Schaben said. “So, they’re more using a band aid approach trying to keep it on. It’s something that we’re working on and we’re trying to find a fix for, but we haven’t got it yet.”