June 8, 2023 at 1:29 p.m.
Public works director: Oneida, Timber improvement projects moving along
Public works director: Oneida, Timber improvement projects moving along
As anyone who has driven around the city recently can attest, road construction season is certainly in full swing and with it plenty of detours to follow.
According to the city's public works director, Randy Myrum, contractors are making progress on both the Oneida Avenue and Timber Drive projects.
A milestone for the Oneida project Myrum was particularly looking forward to crossing of the list was the reopening of the Oneida Avenue-Lincoln Street intersection.
"I'm going to breathe a whole lot easier when we open that up," he told the River News during a site visit June 1.
The intersection reopened to traffic on Friday evening, June 2, slightly ahead of the Saturday, June 3 deadline.
As for the stretch of Oneida Avenue near the Oneida County courthouse, Myrum said workers had reached "the hump" of that portion of the project, as new sanitary lines have been installed.
Water services, the lines connecting houses and businesses to the water main, are also nearly completed on Oneida.
The last utility to be put in is the storm sewer as it's the shallowest, Myrum noted.
"Once the utilities are in, (we) can start building the road," he said. From there, the project will start to move downhill toward completion.
Myrum said the vast majority of motorists have been very cooperative and there have been no traffic incidents in the construction areas, including over the busy Memorial Day weekend.
"I didn't get any phone calls, put it that way," Myrum said, noting that downtime is built into the schedule for the upcoming Fourth of July weekend as well as the Hodag Country Festival.
As of Tuesday evening, June 6, Myrum said both projects were about a week behind schedule.
"Due to conflicts with existing utilities, the (Oneida) project has fallen behind schedule by about 7 days," Myrum said. "There is still the possibility that the project can get back on schedule as work progresses, if the weather cooperates."
"The Timber project is also a week behind, due to hitting pockets of oversized boulders, and the extra time it takes to remove them," he added, noting that he anticipates that project will get back on schedule soon.
"Because of the soil borings completed during the planning phase, we anticipated extra time necessary for dewatering and rock removal and included extra days in the schedule, called "float days," so the project actually anticipates getting back on schedule within the next 2-3 weeks," he explained.
When work began on Anderson Street, workers made an interesting discovery.
"While excavating Anderson we found an old corduroy road about 5 feet below the surface," Myrum said. "This had to have been installed a very long time ago to help bridge over poor soils and was left in place when the next road was built. Due to the deep frost penetration that is typical In Rhinelander, the old wood road must be removed since it is susceptible to freezing and thawing during the winter, and thus creating premature stress and age on the pavement. I hope this will be the only street we find buried organic material in, or this could add unwanted time and expense to the project."
According to several sources, including dictionaries, corduroy roads were made by placing logs perpendicular to the direction of the road. The result was a bumpy passageway that was nonetheless an upgrade from mud or dirt roads. Corduroy roads differ from plank roads in that plank roads were made using flat boards.
The discovery of the wood road below Anderson Street illustrates both the tradition and necessity of continually improving roads using more updated materials. One can imagine the toil required to construct that rudimentary road, the creation of which must have been essential to the residents and merchants of the time just as our streets are today.
The Oneida and Timber projects are Myrum's first major road projects as public works director in Rhinelander. He relocated here last summer after working for the Department of Transportation (DOT) in southern Wisconsin for a number of years.
In working on projects in the Milwaukee area, he was basically "a cog in the wheel," he said, noting that it's more rewarding overseeing needed updates to a smaller community. That said, Myrum did say he will aim to space out road projects in the future, if it all possible.
He stressed that funding will always drive scheduling, but hopefully multiple projects at once can be avoided.
"I'm going to learn going forward to maybe pace things," he said. "Maybe one project a year. I have learned a bit of a lesson here."
Heather Schaefer may be reached at [email protected].
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