Road construction projects continue

Editor's note: The Daily Globe is counting down the Gogebic Range's top five stories of 2021 each day through Friday, New Year's Eve. We continue today with the No. 2 story of the year: Major road construction projects in Bessemer and Hurley. Other top stories in the list have included: at No. 3, The change in air service at the Gogebic-Iron County Airport; No. 4, the reopening of the Pat O'Donnell Civic Center, and No. 5, local preparations for recreational marijuana enterprise.

By JASON JUNO

[email protected]

For regular drivers of U.S. 2, winter may have been a welcome sight. That's because, for all of winter's icy slowdowns, at least the orange barrels are gone.

From smoother pavement in Iron County and a new roundabout in Hurley to the biggest disrupter of them all, the reconstruction of the roadway through Bessemer, it was a long summer on the road.

While the work in Iron County is complete, it will start again in 2022 in Bessemer with a detour adding to the misery this time around.

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For motorists heading east, the roadwork started at Iron County's County B, where the highway was resurfaced to Stateline Road. That was the quickest of the projects and it was completed by the end of July.

Shortly after that came the transformation of 2's junction with U.S. 51. The overpass that had been in place for 59 years was deteriorating and removed. In its place came the region's first roundabout.

The roundabout fully opened to traffic in early October. The intersection serves about 7,200 vehicles per day, according to a 2020 Wisconsin Department of Transportation traffic count.

Officials originally considered several options for the intersection: replace the bridge, stop signs and the roundabout.

Less than 1% of intersections on highways in Wisconsin are roundabouts, compared to 8% with traffic signals. No state highway system has more roundabouts than Wisconsin, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. The state has 440 roundabouts with 256 on the state's highway system, according to WisDOT.

WisDOT touts a number of benefits from roundabouts - they improve traffic flow, they're a greener alternative with less fuel used by passing vehicles and they're a good economic value.

And even if not everyone is a fan of them, they're safer - the chances of dying or being seriously hurt are almost zero compared to regular intersections, according to a Journal-Sentinel story.

"Overall, we see fatalities and serious injuries almost go down to nothing" in roundabouts, Andrea Bill, a traffic safety engineer and researcher at the University of Wisconsin's Traffic Operations and Safety Laboratory, told the Journal-Sentinel. "They don't eliminate everything," but they do "reduce overall, fatal and injury crashes by a significant number."

Fender benders do tend to increase in roundabouts.

"Would you rather have a tow truck or an ambulance come and get you?" she told the paper. "While you might get into a minor fender bender, you're going to come home at the end of the night vs. going to a hospital."

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The U.S. 2 project in Bessemer is about half done, according to Dan Weingarten, MDOT Superior Region's Communications Representative.

Delays were long at times this summer when the highway was down to just one lane open for all traffic on the west side of town. Then there was another slowdown on the other end of town with lanes closed there as well.

A lot of work was done, though.

"This construction season, crews rebuilt U.S. 2 between the Powdermill Creek Bridge and Mill Street on the west side of Bessemer.  Pavement was also reconstructed on the east end of Bessemer between Clayberg Street and Old U.S. 2," Weingarten said. "Water main and sanitary sewer replacement in the U.S. 2 corridor was included in the MDOT road reconstruction."

There's a lot more to come in 2022, including a detour.

"The pavement reconstruction between Mill Street and Clayberg Street remains to be done in 2022 and MDOT will use a detour for eastbound traffic, tentatively scheduled for mid-May through mid-August during this work," Weingarten said. "Westbound U.S. 2 traffic will stay on the highway during most of the construction work, with a short-term detour to the north. Duration of approximately three weeks. Additional milling and resurfacing east of Old U.S. 2 will take place in late 2022."

When it's all said and done, the stretch from east of Massie Street to west of Tamarack Avenue will be a three-lane highway, down from four, Weingarten said.

The average daily traffic from the Powdermill Creek Bridge to Tamarack Avenue in Bessemer in 2021 was 10,725 vehicles per day. Five percent of that is commercial traffic, which includes semis.

The city of Bessemer conducted a large scale water, sewer and street project, that is expected to continue in 2022 and 2023. Some of that work included replacing lead service lines.

MDOT also resurfaced U.S. 2 and M-28 in Wakefield this past summer.

That's the only big project MDOT has planned for Gogebic County in 2022. They do have two coming up in Ontonagon County: resurface and widen shoulders on M-28 from the Gogebic County line to M-64 north, a $1.7 million project, and a $2.7 million project that will resurface U.S. 45 from M-26 to Greenland Road in Ontonagon.