Smuggs Route 108 Closed Again - Watch That Pot Hole - Enormous

[Henry]

Channel 3 News reported tonight that the Route through the Notch is closed again and from the sounds of their weather report, sounds like it will be closed for a few days.

Hopefully nobody comes tooting down Main Hill at a high rate of speed tonight, because the South Bound Lane has an enormous pot hole.  I met the Sheriff on my way to Mass this morning and his front bumper almost went into the dirt.  Must be the heavy rain last night did it in.  Almost need a blinking caution light or a load of gravel there, but suspect they will fix it in the morning when they arrive for work.

[David Shea]

Good Morning,

I have been going past the bridge job almost every day for the past two weeks.  I can not understand why Blow and Cote does not just shut the road down and put up the detour.  Every day they dig up the road and then fill the hole back in at night.  On top of that they do a bad job of compacting the soil when the hole is filled back in leaving giant potholes.  Why not just keep the hole open, put up barricades and detour traffic.

I am starting to understand why the project cost 683,000.00.  Digging the hole and burying every night is a waste of time energy and resources.  Shut the road down, detour traffic, do the work once and get the job done.

Dave

[Luap]

     Dave,  They will close the bridge after school is out.  It's open because of school bus traffic.

[slpott]

That was my first response and question when this all started. "Why don't they wait until school is out to start the job"? Seems like a waste of money to cover and uncover. It seems like it would be easier to work at night when there is no traffic. There must be good reasons.

[David Shea]

The amount of time gained by starting this project before school closed has been negated by the double and triple work that is being done.  A typical case of poor planning, in my opinion there should have been a stipulation in the bid package that the project needed to start after BFA closed for the year.

Had the job started later the budget for traffic control could have been reduced, machine time, fuel, the need for trucking, labor ect.

Poor planning should not be the problem for all that use route 104.

[MikeF9]

splott said: It seems like it would be easier to work at night when there is no traffic.

That's because you don't live next to the site. I don't live next to the site, per se, but I am sure that if the work was done at night, the people living right next to the site would be going BONKERS.

[Shadylane08]

Without first hand knowledge of why they are digging and then backfilling it is hard to say they are doing nothing b/c you don't know why they are digging.  Could they be digging to do soil structure tests to make sure the areas around the footings are solid enough for a new bridge?  Most projects start with test pits in certain areas of a project to determine that everything will go smooth as the project was designed.  A test pit may look like a waste of time to the ordinary laymen, but is actually very essential for projects.  I'm not saying thats what they are doing, but just throwing it out there.

Oh and night work = Lots of money, and if that was to be the plan the engineer would have had to stipulate that during a pre-bid, so all the contractors could have bid it that way.  The $683k price tag would have been much higher.  Plus like Mike said night work in such a residential area would have been really tough!

[David Shea]

I am not implying that the work being performed is unnecessary.  What I am saying is that it would make more sense to keep the hole open until the project is complete instead of closing it up at night.

What is being done is the equivalent of putting up drywall and then realizing that the wiring should have been done.  Taking down the drywall, installing the wiring.  When done only realizing that the plumbing should have been installed and taking the drywall down and then installing the piping.

I have worked in construction during various periods of my life and have a good framework for what makes good sense.  What is happening in the village does not make sense at all.