A section of East Avenue in Rochester will be closed for several weeks beginning later this month.
The section of East between Pitkin and Union Streets will be closed starting around March 14th, so that the contractor working on the Inner Loop Project can remove the East Avenue Bridge.
City Engineer Jim McIntosh says detours will be posted, and there will be signage indicating that businesses in that area remain open. (The detour will include: for traffic going west into downtown: it will turn right onto Union St., then left on Charlotte St., left onto Pitkin St., then back to East Avenue.
Traffic leaving downtown, going east, will turn right onto Pitkin, left on Broad St., and then left on Union, back to East Ave.)
Although East Ave is a busy road, McIntosh doesn’t expect the temporary work will cause major delays. He says traffic signal timing in that area will be adjusted to help drivers.
“The signal timing will be set because there won’t be cross traffic at East, so that the signals will be set up to just let the traffic flow as if they were on East Avenue, so there won’t be those long delays at the two lights.”
McIntosh says it’s hoped that the section of East Avenue will be reopened in mid-June, before the start of the jazz festival.
He also says the contractor is hoping to get 80 percent of the work done on the project to fill in the inner loop by the end of this year, and wrap up the remaining construction next year.
The more than $22 million project to fill in the Inner Loop is designed to create land that can be developed for businesses, housing and other activity.
