Traffic headache becomes a migraine

That was the estimate of Richard Clark, a longtime employee of ADA Traffic Control. The company has been hired to make sure drivers don’t try to cross a bridge that very soon won’t be there, and to get them turned around if they do.

Clark said a couple of young adults swore at him on the first day, but he just ignored them; after 17 years working traffic control, he has a thick skin.

He said one tractor-trailer truck came down Mountain Road Monday just after 6 a.m., which was the official start of construction. Luckily, the crews hadn’t yet started tearing up the pavement, and were able to let the hapless trucker through.

“Knowing how to read a paper map comes in handy,” Clark said.

Farther out, Stowe police had patrol vehicles running blue lights from dawn until dusk. Stowe Police Chief Donald Hull said officers calculated the longest wait time to get from the center of town past the temporary traffic light at Route 100 and West Hill Road was eight minutes.

Hull said drivers need to anticipate that commute times will be a little longer than normal.

That will be exacerbated by major road construction at the Waterbury confluence of Route 100 and Interstate 89, where afternoon rush hour traffic southbound on Route 100 will not have access to the southbound I-89 entrance ramp.

“Take some extra time, because you never know when there’s going to be a delay,” Hull said.

Waterbury’s projects will have a ripple effect on daily commutes and special events in Stowe. It won't be much of a problem getting into Stowe, but getting out could be a different story.

For starters, both southbound ramps from Route 100 to Interstate 89 will be closed — one indefinitely, one from 3 to 6 p.m. every weekday — as part of a reconstruction project involving both northbound and southbound bridges immediately adjacent to the interstate’s Exit 10.

On the interstate, traffic in both directions will be narrowed to a single lane during the bridge construction, and the on-ramp restrictions are intended to ease congestion on I-89. The details:

• Starting this week, traffic heading north on Route 100 from Waterbury village will no longer be able to turn right onto a southbound on-ramp, said Theresa Wood, a community liaison for the Vermont Agency of Transportation. That on-ramp will be closed until next year at the earliest, when state officials will decide whether to reopen it.

• However, those drivers can turn left at a traffic signal onto a new connection “stub” to the other southbound I-89 on-ramp, which in the past was only for drivers going south on Route 100. Those turns will be controlled by a traffic light.

• But both northbound and southbound on-ramps to I-89 will be closed weekdays between 3 and 6 p.m., starting next Monday and continuing through the entire construction season. The interstate will be closed to both northbound and southbound traffic on Route 100.

As a result, drivers headed south on Route 100 will have to go through Waterbury’s Main Street to Route 2, and head for Exit 9 — the Middlesex/Moretown connection — to get onto I-89 south. That will dump a lot of traffic into downtown Waterbury every weekday afternoon.

“Temporary signals have been installed along the detour route and a team of traffic monitors will be initially stationed at key intersections to ensure that traffic is flowing properly,” said Erik Filkorn, a spokesman for Vtrans.

• On the interstate, both northbound and southbound traffic will be reduced to a single lane near Exit 10, with crossovers to bypass work being done on the southbound bridge.

Daily updates are posted at watp.vtransprojects.vermont.gov.