By Dawn De Busk

Staff Writer

NAPLES — With predictions that Old Man Winter might make his first appearance this week, officials in towns along the Route 302 corridor wonder how snowplows will fare after a state paving project left many intersections and driveways at a different height than the main road.

Raymond Public Works Director Nathan White is concerned that these problems with the paving job on Route 302 will make plowing difficult, especially with a snowstorm just around the corner.

“Where they matched it on Route 121 isn’t very good. Route 85 — it doesn’t ride very good. I don’t think the ride quality is very good. I wouldn’t accept it if it was a town road. I don’t think the workmanship was good at all,” White said.

“You carry your surface on the road, blend it into side roads, an inch of pavement to blend,” he said. “They came down through there and did the main road and left the butt joints. Normally, they do the prep work, right behind is a hand crew finishing up all the stuff.”

He explained the butt joints are where the pavement meets. 

“We still got our sidewalks that were ground in June. You have an inch drop on the sidewalks,” he said.

“There’s a storm coming Friday. I don’t know how we are going to plow,” he said.

The Maine Department of Transportation (MaineDOT) will take care of the driveways and aprons before winter, according to Rich Crawford, who is the Bureau Director of Project Development for the MaineDOT in Augusta.

MaineDOT is the agency that budgeted the Route 302 paving project — a job that was bid out and included paving 19.5 miles from White’s Bridge Road in Windham to Route 35 in Naples, and from the area of the Naples fire station to Route 117 in Bridgton. MaineDOT awarded the bid to Pike Industries.

It is actually Scarborough that oversees specific projects in the Lake Region, but the Augusta bureau returned phone calls before press time. 

If there is a road entrance, or apron, left at a level lower than the main road “it will have some pavement on it before winter,” Crawford said.

“We will make sure it is in suitable condition before winter,” Crawford said.

Citizens complain to town, to MaineDOT

When there is a problem with a road in a town, it is the town staff who hears about it, even if that road is owned and maintained by the state. 

Many residents in the towns of Naples, Casco and Raymond have been concerned about the driveways which do not meet the height of the new pavement on Route 302, also known as Roosevelt Trail.

Citizens have been curious why crews skipped the driveways while paving the main road. People have asked why the entrances to driveway, also known as aprons, are an inch or two lower than the main road and more importantly when that will be remedied. 

That is when they pick up the phone and call their local town hall. The towns of Casco and Naples have a road commissioner while Raymond has a public works department.

Raymond Town Manager Don Willard attested to the spike in phone calls. The public works director field most of the calls but some came through to Willard’s office.

“Yes, I have gotten a number as well. I’ve given them the Scarborough MaineDOT number,” he said.

“People don’t understand. Why do the surface pavement and come back weeks or months later to do the driveways. They think it is illogical that the state would do it that way,” Willard said.

White, who heads Raymond public works, has also been on the receiving end of complaints. He has tried to answer citizens’ questions and he has tried to get answers from the state.

“There are a lot of people who think it’s a Raymond-Windham job, not a state job. That is what people think — that it is a town job,” he said.

“A few people know it’s a state job, but there are a lot of people who didn’t know it was a state job. The residents of Raymond call with a complaint. The residents think I am passing the buck,” White said.

Over the course of the summer, “tons of calls” have rung through to his department.

“They want ‘em done. They cut those butt joints back in the middle of July and people have been driving over them since then. I don’t blame people for getting upset,” White said.

“The contractor refers it to MaineDOT. The state refers it to the contractor. I have never really got a good answer from the contractor or from the state,” he said. 

“The calls have simmered down since Labor Day,” he said.

“Same thing when the traffic was backed up — the phone was ringing off the hook. People were 45 minutes to an hour held up in traffic, which was totally unacceptable,” White said

“There is a lot of traffic, Route 302 is a busy road. I’m not sure if they could do anything different,” he said, adding that it was frustrating not to have any control to help traffic go smoother during this project.

“The part I am most upset with is: It’s almost December and the project is not done yet. It’s going to snow Friday and we are going to have to plow around the crap,” White said.

Casco Town Manager Courtney O’Donnell mentioned the Route 302 project during her manager’s report. The Casco Town Hall has received numerous calls about the intersecting roads and driveways that needed asphalt to be at the same level as Roosevelt Trail, she said. At the time, which was during the last week of October, MaineDOT had not returned O’Donnell’s phone calls.

Naples Town Manager John Hawley, who also serves in the role of Naples Road Commissioner, said the phone has been ringing off the hook about the breaks in pavement between Route 302 and the roads that intersect Route 302.

“There have been many complaints regarding the intersections that do not have the pavement put down to match the new pavement height on [Route] 302, specifically at Songo School Road,” Hawley said.

He got so many calls he started giving out the MaineDOT number to people, he said.

October deadline for surface paving on state roads

Naples Town Manager Hawley said that “hearsay has presented many reasons as to why it is taking so long” to finish up the Route 302 paving project; and it seems the state’s paving deadline is at the root of the cause.

“The official word from a spokesperson is that MaineDOT needed to get all the main road paving done by a certain date and that the match paving could be done after,” he said.

“They have just finished up the main paving and are supposed to be working on those driveways and intersections ASAP,” Hawley said. “This includes lifting all of the water gate valves that needed to be lowered for pavement grinding.”

MaineDOT abides by a rule for paving which requires that the surface pavement on all state roads must be paved by the first Saturday after Oct. 15, according to Crawford from the MaineDOT office in Augusta.

In many cases, this is the reason that the main thoroughfare was paved and the side roads and driveways were left untouched and at a different height, especially as the paving season comes to an end in the fall, Crawford said.

He said that there are different deadlines for the Northern and Southern half of the state.

“The surface is the top lanes traveled by vehicles. In the northern area, which is Route 2 to Bangor and Route 9 from Bangor to Calais, they have until the Saturday after Oct. 1,” he said.

“In the southern zone, [paving crews] have until the Saturday after the 15th of October, which this year was Oct. 19, to complete the travel zone surface,” he said.

The paving deadline is tied to the occurrence of temperatures that are too cold for paving, he said.

Now that the date for surface paving on the main road has passed, crews should be scrambling to bring aprons up to par, he said.

“As far as driveways, we do not have a specified dates that paving ends.

What our spec says is that the ground cannot be frozen and the air temperature has to be 40 degrees,” Crawford said.

“A lot of times, what the contractors do is: if one date is not so good, they will hold off ’til the next date,” he said.

“They will go out and continue to work on them [butt joints on roads, driveways and aprons] as long as they can. If it cannot meet the spec for permanent pavement, they would put in some temporary pavement, come back next spring and finish up,” Crawford said.