Long-term lane restriction on Route 248 due to retaining wall damage
TOP: Damage to this concrete retaining wall in Lower Towamensing Township will result in a long-term lane restriction on Route 248 west starting Thursday.
BELOW: A close-up view of the damage to the retaining wall on Route 248, which was built in the 1960s. BOB FORD/TIMES NEWS
Damage to a concrete retaining wall in Lower Towamensing Township will result in a long-term lane restriction that will be implemented on Route 248 west starting Thursday.
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s District 5 announced Tuesday that the lane on 248 west will be restricted between Route 873 and Delaware Avenue after a recent inspection revealed damage to a 25-foot high section of the wall along the mountainside.
Sean Brown, PennDOT spokesman, said the wall was built in the early 1960s.
“It just is in need of work, you know, at its useful life,” Brown said.
“We need to do some repairs up there and then fix it up.”
PennDOT has hired a contractor to make necessary repairs to the damaged wall, and for safety reasons the lane restriction on 248 west will remain in place until the repairs are complete.
Work is scheduled to begin in late February/early March, and at times will entail weeknight lane closures on 248 east and west between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m.
During that time, a single lane of 248 west traffic will be shifted onto 248 east to provide space for maneuvering equipment and materials.
Work will include removing loose dirt and installing retaining wall anchors into the bedrock behind the wall.
This section of Route 248 has an average daily traffic volume of 20,438 vehicles, including 9,881 vehicles on 248 west, and 10,557 vehicles on 248 east.
H&K Group Inc. of Skippack, is the general contractor on the $986,222 emergency project that is expected to be complete by July 5.
The lane restriction comes while work on the Route 248 bridge replacement project in Carbon County remains underway, but Brown said it won’t impact that project.
“What we’re doing with the bridge, this won’t affect the pattern of the bridge. We are going to be lifting that by the end of the year,” Brown said. “We will have work to finish up with that bridge after winter, but we will be lifting the bridge restriction by the end of this year.”
Earlier this month, Brown said he wasn’t sure when exactly the bridge replacement project will be completed.
The status of that project recently came under scrutiny by state Rep. Doyle Heffley, R-Carbon.
Heffley sent a letter to state Department of Transportation Secretary Leslie Richards detailing his frustration with the project.
In his letter, Heffley raised concerns over public safety and work delays relating to the replacement of the bridge.
Work on the bridge will cost about $1.1 million, and is part of a $5.9 million contract awarded to Kriger Construction Inc. of Scranton to replace 13 bridges in three counties.
The bridge carries Route 248 over Norfolk Southern Rail lines and was built in 1962.
PennDOT announced in July that the Route 248 bridge project was expected to be completed in November.
Heffley also questioned the reason behind the delay in the completion of the contract and whether the contractor will be held financially, or otherwise, responsible; who wrote the specific contract; who approved the contract and awarded the project to the construction firm; and how does the department address contractors that have overextended themselves across numerous projects around the commonwealth, and not finish them on time.
In response to the letter, Ron Young, PennDOT spokesman, said there have been some issues with the bridge.
Young said that the expansion dams expand and contract with weather conditions, and noted that when the contractor started to replace them, they realized the original design didn’t fit with what they were seeing on the bridge, and that they had to reorder them.
He said that isn’t “uncommon” when dealing with a bridge maintenance contract.
Young noted this particular contract has 13 bridges, and the contractor has a start date and completion date to do all the bridges.
He said the dates are “anticipated, estimated,” and that “as long as they get the work done between the start and finish dates, they are in compliance with the original contract. They have until August 2019 to finish all the bridges.”
The project officially began in August 2016.
Comments
“What we’re doing with the bridge, this won’t affect the pattern of the bridge. We are going to be lifting that by the end of the year,” Brown said. “We will have work to finish up with that bridge after winter, but we will be lifting the bridge restriction by the end of this year.”"
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Should not someone inform Mr. Brown that the "end of this year" is something like 30 days away and that the custom expansion dams that were being installed in August (90 days ago) haven't been put in place in any of the 4 lanes as of today. For the contractor (Kriger Construction Inc. of Scranton) to pull that one off would seem to be a bit out of character.
Not saying it can't be done just seem a little odd that the contractor has waited until the beginning of winter to finish in a mad rush what should have been completed months ago at a reasonable pace. And I still have a feeling that PennDOT will continue to reach down deep, pull out all of the stops, to find as many creative ways as humanly possible to make the trip along Rt 248 as memorable as possible for as long as possible.
I guess all this means that Kriger Construction Inc. of Scranton will strip manpower from the Rt. 209 bridge non-construction project to work on the Rt.248 fiasco. A good question to ponder is "will anyone notice the work crews missing (on Rt. 209) in Franklin Twp.?"
While I'm in the mood to comment this project is "scheduled" to begin in the spring and finish July 5th, which is a Friday right after a holiday but for now lets say July 5th. Doesn't matter when it starts because the lanes are restricted right now.
Those who travel from the east on Rt. 248 to and from the Lehigh Valley might be interested in knowing that in the very same Spring 2019 PennDOT is planning on replacing two (2) bridges right up the old dusty trail a piece, in Moore Twp. Northampton County. The two bridges are located close to each other about 800 feet apart and will be complete teardowns. There will be a 6 mile detour around the bridges and if your into cost it's 3.6 million bucks.
Depending on how things go with the weather and the availability of expansion dams there will be months of overlap between the Rt 248 Retaining wall rebuild, the Norfolk Southern overpass (both near Palmerton) and the Moore Twp. bridge replacements.
I'm working on a formula to decipher PennDOT project completion dates based on what they tell us at the beginning of a project and the actual finish date. Still have bugs to work out but I do have a working model. Here it is: (E - B) x 1.6 where E=month project is projected to end, B=month project begins.
So for example, project begins in March (B) and is scheduled to be completed in July (E) March is the 3rd month of the year, July is the 7th month of the year
So (7-3) x 1.6 = 6.8 which gives you the number of months the project will actually take to complete, in this case 6.4 months. So we can expect the retaining wall to be completed approx. September 10th. (6.4 months from March 1st is September 10th).
In practical terms this means that the Rt 248 retaining wall and the Norfolk Southern overpass project travel delays will run concurrent finishing right around Labor day. The overlap between this mess in Carbon County and the two bridge replacements and associated 6 mile detour will be the same. According to Penn DOT those bridges will be completed in the "Fall" lets say October 1st. Plug that into the formula and BOOM! your into the year 2020!
In summary driving on Rt 248 from now until Spring will be awful but once they start the detour in Moore Twp. awful becomes a nightmare for about 5 to 6 months. Once the nightmare is over, it reverts back to awful for those that travel that route into the Valley for roughly 6 more months. That is assuming no moore shortages of expansion dams.
Getting back to the comments made in the above article by Sean Brown, PennDOT dist 5 spokes individual:
"The lane restriction comes while work on the Route 248 bridge replacement project in Carbon County remains underway, but Brown said it won’t impact that project.
“What we’re doing with the bridge, this won’t affect the pattern of the bridge. We are going to be lifting that by the end of the year,” Brown said. “We will have work to finish up with that bridge after winter, but we will be lifting the bridge restriction by the end of this year.””
What this actually means is the contractor (Kriger Construction Inc. of Scranton) will finish installing the expansion dams that are being installed in August (2018) and place a useable road surface on the right lanes of both the east and west lanes of the Norfolk Southern RR overpass. This will allow PennDOT to use both lanes on the east bound overpass to route traffic (1 east, 1 west) when all of the west bound lanes are closed to fix the retaining wall. However the left lanes east and west will not be any closer to being completed than they were on the day last April when “work” started on the project.
What this doesn’t mean is all of the expansion dams and road surface will be complete in 2018, leaving misc. odd jobs such as shoulder and/or railing work for the spring. Because of the emergency work on the wall, the contractor will ask for and receive an extension (contract mod) to work past the August 2019 deadline. SR 248 from Palmerton to Airport Road north of Bath (due to the double bridge replacement in Moore Twp.) will be a commuter train wreck for at least another year from now.
This is a instance where the contractor got very lucky when all along they intended to make passage through the area as difficult as possible while meeting the terms and conditions of a poorly conceived and executed contract.