Downtown Schenectady trip an Erie-tating, slow drive

Traffic is starting to back up as work begins on rebuilding Erie Boulevard.

For the past three weeks, laborers have been installing new pipelines on both sides of the road, from I-890 to State Street, and traffic has snarled in response.

Drivers, beware: This will continue for more than a year.

The goal is to finish by Oct. 1, 2013. Workers will also be absent over the winter — state regulations won’t allow them to work on the road after Nov. 1 — but they’ll be there every weekday until then. So far, they’re on schedule.

Signs have been posted at both ends of the work zone, but Erie is a major thoroughfare, and many drivers are still trying to use it. If they hit at just the wrong time in the middle of the day, they end up sitting through several cycles of the traffic lights before inching forward.

To those who aren’t driving, it’s an amusing sight.

“I can watch the traffic back up from where we’re sitting,” said Grog Shoppe Chef Jeff Schultz. The restaurant is near the corner of Erie and State, the worst part of the congestion.

“It’s starting to back up again now,” he said as he watched. “It’ll be that way for a couple hours.”

Schultz isn’t bothered — partly because he arrives at work long before the laborers arrive, so he avoids the congestion.

“From our standpoint, it’s probably a bonus,” he said, noting some drivers may decide to stop in for dinner and head back out after roadwork ends for the day. “We put our sign back up. They have nothing to do but look at the windows.”

Others aren’t as enthusiastic. Marc Renson, owner of Ambition on Jay Street, got stuck in traffic Tuesday trying to get back to his restaurant from the bank.

“People would sit [in the intersection] through the red light and wouldn’t let us cross,” he said. “Maybe they could pave at night? But I’m happy to see it’s finally getting fixed.”

There’s a lot more than just paving going on. The $10 million project is so big that Senior Civil Engineer John O’Sullivan is working from a temporary construction office set up on-site.

From there, he’s supervising the installation of the two pipelines. Next, crews will put a 24-inch water line down the center of the road — and yes, this will continue to cause traffic delays.

In mid-July, they will also start excavating the south end of the boulevard, nearest to the highway. They’ll dig out the sidewalks, curbs and roadway to just past the center line, O’Sullivan said.

This is a full rebuild, so they will pull out 2 feet of material under the road, he added.

Before they can rebuild the base with crushed stone, they’ll lay new sewer and water laterals and electrical hookups. Every business will be getting an electrical upgrade, but those aren’t the only conduits O’Sullivan must fit in. He also has to add conduits for four traffic lights — at Church, State, Liberty and Union streets — and conduits for streetlights.

Then, finally, they’ll pour the stone and build the road up to the binder, the rough temporary road that commuters often see during paving projects.

That binder will remain all winter. But O’Sullivan has planned for the snow: His crew will move all the manhole covers down to be flush with the binder.

“So the snow can be removed and the plows won’t hit the irons,” he said. “They’ll have to be adjusted again next year.”

There’s much more that must be done next year, so much that O’Sullivan said it could only be truly conveyed by studying the many plans he has laid out in his office.

“It’s pretty involved,” he said. “You know, people say, ‘Why is that costing $10 million? You’re only paving a street.’ We’re doing a lot more than that. I’ll tell you, people will be really pleased when we’re done.”

The project is mainly funded by federal grants, with a 5 percent city match.