Despite a rash of late-summer rainy weather, the Fraser Street realignment project remains on track for completion in November, State College engineer Amy Story said Wednesday.
The nearly $1 million project, meant to streamline traffic and pedestrian flow at the Fraser Street-West Beaver Avenue intersection, began in mid-summer. Occasional lane closures in that area of Beaver Avenue will continue through the construction process, Story said.
In addition, she said, the Fraser Street parking garage will need to be closed for as many as three to four days. That’s likely to happen in October, as workers rebuild the garage entrance to connect it adequately with the rebuilt roadway, Story said.
The timing of the garage closure, not yet determined, will hinge on ‘how quickly they move along with other aspects’ of the project, she said.
And it’s possible the inconvenience may last only one or two days, Story added.
For the time being, the 100 block of South Fraser Street remains open only to northbound traffic; southbound traffic is to resume by November.
The work will eliminate the dog-leg effect at Fraser Street and West Beaver Avenue, allowing a rebuilt Fraser Street to curve gently between West Beaver and West College avenues. Importantly, the streamlined intersection at Beaver Avenue will ease traffic-signal patterns, bolster safety, and help simplify and speed traffic flow through downtown State College, borough officials have said.
In the interim, though, the construction process has led to some backed-up traffic on Beaver Avenue. A Downtown Improvement District leader raised that issue earlier this summer, asking if traffic signals could be somehow adjusted temporarily to relax the jams.
Story said the state Department of Transportation would need to approve any such changes, even in the interim. She has approached PennDOT about the matter, but has not received any definitive answers back, Story said.
Meanwhile, she said, the borough is required to keep the existing traffic-signal patterns in place. Pittsburgh-based Baiano Construction Co. is the primary contractor on the project.
A secondary project, being completed concurrently, will add improved handicapped-accessible ramps at the Fraser Street-College Avenue intersection, Story said.
Earlier this month, StateCollege.com Managing Editor William Derrick interviewed State College public-works Director Mark Whitfield about the Fraser Street work in some detail. Whitfield’s comments are included in the video embedded below. (At the time of the interview taping, in early September, the project was somewhat behind schedule, but that’s no longer the case.)
Earlier coverage
