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Roberts Mountain Climbing Lanes Will Ease Truck Traffic By Lori Tobias CEG CORRESPONDENT
A $25.98 million project near Roseburg, Ore., should get traffic flowing more smoothly over a mountain pass in the Umpqua River Valley. Contractors for the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) are building climbing lanes in both directions over Roberts Mountain to move tractor trailers struggling to make the grade out of the flow of traffic. “Prior to the project, semis were creating three lanes by driving on the shoulder, which wasn’t safe due to the narrow width,” said ODOT Construction Manager
A $25.98 million project near Roseburg, Ore., should get traffic flowing more smoothly over a mountain pass in the Umpqua River Valley. Contractors for the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) are building climbing lanes in both directions over Roberts Mountain.
The majority of earth work is expected to be completed this year, but it will be too late to pave. Paving will begin next spring when the contractor will move to the next stage of work.
Patrick Gage. “There are quite a few different types of loads traveling over the mountain. Primarily the heavy loads are what cause the bigger issues. The slowest seem to be the tanker trailers.” The lanes will run a little over a mile and taper off at the summit. The work is taking place primarily on the west side of the highway. “The work zone is protected by temporary barrier and there are still two lanes in both directions but we have taken the shoulders away,” Gage said. “We’re trying to force the trucks to stay in the right lane only. But there are lots of congestion issues because of semis traveling in both lanes. We’ve staged going up hill south bound and will be excavating existing roadside
and that material will be placed on the south side of the mountain. It will be a fill. Instead of widening up hill, we’re building all the widening on the west side only. Once the climbing lane is done we’ll move to the median and move the median barrier over. After that is done the center median will be shifted to the west to add room for the northbound direction.” Kerr Contractors, Woodburn, Ore., began excavation work in May with 30-to-40-yd. off road dump trucks hauling 18,000 truck loads of material. Workers did the first blast of hard rock in August and expect to have two to three more blasts over the next couple of months. see LANES page 10