Starting Saturday, Ketchikan’s Third Avenue Bypass will be closed during daytime hours for four days while crews replace a pedestrian guardrail destroyed in August’s fatal landslide.
There has been a temporary chain link fence along the bypass sidewalk for months. But Public Works Director Seth Brakke said the city’s now replacing it with a permanent galvanized steel railing.
“So the goal of the project is to pull that temporary fence out and put a new fence back in,” Brakke said. “A new pedestrian guardrail that was essentially fabricated exactly like the old railing that was there.”
Work is scheduled between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Saturday through Tuesday. That means drivers can use the bypass in the evenings. Brakke said the equipment will block both lanes of traffic, so the city tried to schedule work for the least disruptive time — over the weekend and leading into spring break.
There’s also ongoing construction slowing traffic on Tongass Avenue, the city’s other main thoroughfare. Brakke said the city did take that into consideration, but that school bus transportation was their main priority.
“The challenge is there’s going to be road construction on Tongass for the foreseeable future, so it was just appropriate for us to get that railing in now, before summer,” Brakke said.
Brakke said fixing the guardrail will cost about $20,000. For now, the city’s covering that cost with its streets funding. But it hopes to eventually receive federal reimbursement. Brakke said representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) were in Ketchikan this week, verifying repairs the city has made since the landslide.
The Third Avenue Bypass is scheduled to reopen after 5 p.m. on Tuesday, March 11.
