The City of Asheville would like to thank everyone for their continued patience with the work that has occurred over the winter months along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
Public Works is now taking the next step of this project. Unfortunately, this step will be much more disruptive to the neighborhood. This phase started on Monday, March 12, with the milling of the pavement to prepare for paving.
Earlier report:
As soon as our contractor has pipe and concrete work finished they plan to start in the road. This likely will be Tuesday or Wednesday (March 13-14).
Prior to this you will see that the existing pavement paint will be removed and new traffic patterns will be in place. This will include the removal of bike lanes and parking spots. This will happen Thursday and Friday of this week (March 8-9) prior to the road work.
When the road work starts, crews will start at the intersection of College and MLK. We will remove the existing road down approximately 10 inches and then begin paving back to within about 1 ½ inches of the existing condition. During this time frame any driveways or side streets in specific work areas will not be accessible for 8-10 hours per day.
We anticipate that it will take 8-9 days to go down the length from College to Charlotte streets on the right side, then turn and come back Charlotte to College streets over another 8-9 days, and finally go down the middle from College to Charlotte in another 8-9 days.
We will not leave any areas overnight where homes or side streets cannot be accessed, but during the day they will be very disrupted.
Once this is complete we plan to have approximately 2 weeks of work to install the curbing “bulb-outs” that we agreed to. Once that is complete, crews will finish the final surface and final paint markings and the project will be complete. At this point we anticipate completion will be the middle to end of May.
We greatly appreciate the entire neighborhood’s understanding and patience through this process.
