A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
Workers removed the pavement from Washington Avenue from Minnesota Highway 33 to 14th Street last week but the road is still open to local traffic while contractors work on city sanitary sewer and storm sewer crossings. Drivers are encouraged to detour to Doddridge or Carlton Avenue if they are traveling through town.
Contractors broke ground last week on the biggest road project in Cloquet this summer, the complete reconstruction of Washington Avenue. The $3.074 million project includes all of the busy roadway, from Minnesota Highway 33 to County Highway 45.
For now the work is limited to the portion between Highway 33 and 14th Street, where the pavement has been removed and work on storm sewer crossings and city of Cloquet sanitary sewer is underway. That section is still open to local traffic, although the county recommends people detour down Doddridge or Carlton Avenue when and where as they can.
Assistant county engineer Milt Hagen said work on the portions of Washington Avenue near the schools can't begin until after school gets out. Work on the portion from 14th Street to 22nd Street - in front of Cloquet Middle School - is scheduled to begin June 3 and has to be completed by Aug. 30, before school starts in the fall.
The project will bring several significant changes to the busy roadway.
The new Washington Avenue will be narrower, at 36 feet instead of 44. Instead of having two parking lanes and two driving lanes on each side, parking will be eliminated and there will be one lane each way for driving and a mostly continuous center turn lane.
On the south side of the roadway, there will be a new 10-foot-wide shared concrete path - for walkers, bicyclists, skateboarders, etc. - running all the way from Eighth Street (by Kwik Trip) to 29th Street in Scanlon. While the curbs on the north side of the road will remain in roughly the same place, plans move the south curb north about 7 ½ feet, to make room for the shared path and a boulevard on that side of the street. All sidewalks and pathways will be ADA-compliant.
The existing bituminous path between 18th and 22nd on the north side of Washington Avenue will be replaced by a concrete sidewalk.
The stop signs at 20th Street (the middle school entrance) that were added when the new school opened two years ago will be replaced by pedestrian crosswalks. Kids walking to school and others crossing the street there will be able to push a button that will turn on three different rapidly flashing beacon signs - one on the south side, one on the median, and one on the north side - to alert drivers to stop because a pedestrian is or will be crossing.
That's not all. Instead of a center turn lane on the east side of 20th Street, there will be a "pedestrian refuge," or median island, where people crossing the street can stand if traffic is moving on either side. There will be a center turn lane on the west side, for people turning into the CMS driveway.
Hagen said there also will be pedestrian crossings at the intersections with 18th Street and 22nd Street.
Hagen said the school will also program two speed limit signs for the peak times of drop-off and pick-up at the school.
"The signs will say 'School Speed Zone 20 mph when flashing,' and then flash what your speed is," Hagen said. "But it won't necessarily be a 20 mph speed limit all day long."
The city of Scanlon will also be doing some sewer and waterline work below the roadway during the construction project.
