CLICK TO HEAR JACK HALL’S INTERVIEW WITH DAN WEINGARTEN, M-DOT
The orange barrels have been mostly put away for the season as winter approaches in the Upper Peninsula.
M-DOT spokesman Dan Weingarten tells RRN News that only a few projects are still in progress in the region, mostly in the Eastern U.P. And those are quickly winding down and will be done soon.
“We have a couple of culverts on M-123 near Tahquamenon Falls that need to be replaced, and a little bit of work left on M-77, where we were doing road work from Blaney Park up to Germfask,” Weingarten said in an interview earlier this week. “We’ve also got a bridge project over on the west end of the Seney Stretch at Prairie Creek that had to be done a half at a time to allow traffic to get through. The second half of that bridge deck is being finished up.”
Also, in Menominee County, Weingarten says work is largely done on the railroad bridge near Powers that was causing a detour off of US-2 . He said that “should be done by the end of this week”.
Otherwise, a busy construction season is pretty much over for M-DOT. But, they’re not just lounging around at facilities across the Upper Peninsula. It’s full speed ahead into winter.
“We’ve got all of the slots for our transportation workers, that’s our plow drivers, filled, with the exception of one position in L’Anse,” Weingarten said. “We typically have about 58 plow drivers working out of our four garages that cover Mackinac, Baraga, and Houghton Counties. The county road commissions, under contract, handle the plowing and road maintenance in the other (twelve) counties in the U.P. They’re all getting ready for winter.”
Weingarten says the target date is November 9 for the start of winter shifts, although hehe adds that they’re ready to go if a snowstorm comes before that. And what if there’s no need for snow plowing in November?
“We have brushing, we have shoulder work they can do,” he said. “There’s a lot of maintenance of the vehicles themselves. We’ve got salt sheds that need to be checked on to make sure that they’re full and ready to go. They will stay busy. And we can adjust our staffing levels, too, based on the need.”
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