Starting on Monday, October 6th, drivers using SE 82nd Avenue should anticipate two weeks of traffic disruption between SE Clinton and Brooklyn streets as crews from Raimore Construction continue an August repaving project. The contractor, working with the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), will close lanes of the busy roadway for repaving from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. One overnight shift will begin at 10 p.m. on Friday, October 17th, and last until 7 a.m. Saturday morning. During the project, barriers will consolidate 82nd Avenue traffic to one lane in each direction.
PBOT encourages all street users to find alternate routes, take transit, or otherwise avoid driving through the worksite during this repaving project. This past summer, Raimore Construction completed similar road-surface repairs on the 82nd Avenue pavement and replaced failing sections of the roadway north of SE Clinton Street. At peak times, merging delays through that repaving worksite significantly impacted travel times. This roadwork supports ongoing safety and maintenance upgrades on 82nd Avenue required to address deferred maintenance issues identified after the jurisdictional transfer of the former state Highway from the Oregon Department of Transportation to PBOT on June 1st, 2022.
Unlike many repaving projects that only grind off the top layer of asphalt and replace it with a fresh mixture of aggregate and bitumen, this project requires more significant work in the outer lanes. In its early stages, 82nd Avenue initially supported only three lanes of traffic, with one lane for vehicles traveling in each direction and a center turn lane. Transportation officials reserved the outer edges of the street for parking, and engineers did not build parking pavement to the same standard as the street’s center. When transportation officials removed parking to add another travel lane in each direction, they did not update the road’s supporting base, leading to premature wear. Crews working on this project will need to remove the outer lanes to their base layer and reengineer it to support the weight of vehicles in motion above it before repaving the whole surface. The results will provide a smoother road that should last longer before requiring future repairs.
Ongoing roadwork on 82nd Avenue near Fubonn Shopping Center, located at 2850 SE 82nd Avenue, has impacted customer access to shops in the complex. Newly created alternate access to Fubonn on SE 85th Avenue is available from SE Brooklyn Street. PBOT and shopping center management encourage visitors to use the eastern entrance during construction, instead of deferring trips. The collection of small businesses there depends on consistent income from regular customers. Paving project planners anticipate crews will complete this phase of work by Saturday, October 18th. This roadwork is weather-dependent, so the scheduled repaving dates may shift, or crews could extend the project’s duration. TriMet’s website does not currently list any stop closures for the 72 bus line, but transit riders using this route should check for service impacts and stop closures before heading out between October 6th and 18th.
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