More road on the way: U.S. 80 work still has ways to go
Published 12:00 am Thursday, February 19, 2004
A local resident Vickie Austin is fed up with a mile stretch of Highway 80 W. She drives this piece of road everyday and has noticed a very disturbing trend when cars and trucks are approaching this section of Hwy 80. They all start to merge to the left.
“I don’t understand why the road is so bad, they have already resurfaced it, but it is worse than any dirt road I’ve ever driven on,” Austin said.
She said you would expect the quality of work to be better than this. Normally when a new section of paved highway is completed there shouldn’t be runts and bumps left.
The Demopolis Times called ST Bunn Construction in Tuscaloosa about this problem. Sunny Bunn, owner of ST Bunn Construction said that the project was bid on back in June of this year.
“What we plan to do with this project is to level the slope of the road and correct the super elevation if need be,” Bunn said.
He also said the leveling of the road will take about a week or so, but there is still more work to be done after that. The next step in the process is to lay two or three layers of asphalt the whole stretch of the project, which is 4.87 miles or all the way to the Hale County line.
“After we finish the layers of asphalt, we will come in and spray an open graded friction course on top,” Bunn said.
What the friction course will do will be to deter skidding and cut down the spray from the trucks when it is raining. Basically once the road is finished, it will be a total upgrade from the previous road.
“This section of road is in pretty bad shape. The last time we repaved it was about 12 years ago,” Bunn said.
The total timeline for this project looks to be about March or April. The leveling may only take a week, but they have to wait until warmer weather arrives in order to spray the topcoat on.
“I need 8-9 days of 60 degrees or better weather in order to spray on the friction course,” Bunn said.
The District Engineer of the Alabama Department of Transportation John Geeslin said once the roadwork is completed the road will be very nice to drive on.
