MDT replacing First Street curbs

The Montana Department of Transportation is working to replace broken curbs on First Street in Havre, which has led to lanes being closed on the main street through Havre.

MDT Havre Area Engineering Project Manager Mike Moore said the project is scheduled to be substantially complete by Aug. 24.

Moore said his team has completed most of the major removals and will be prepping surfaces this week, as long as everything stays on track.

Moore said the current curbs were put in in 2007 and 2008, but since 2010 they've been seeing more and more breakages in them, and now MDT is replacing them with a new design that should be better long-term.

He said they're using a new method of replacement that will save a lot of work digging out substantial amounts of concrete like they normally would.

He said the technique, one they've seen work well in Washington state, involves removing the old curb, inserting rebar dowels and applying an epoxy bonding agent to attach curbs.

He said this will allow them to save quite a bit of concrete that they'd normally have to dig out, which is great since the concrete in question is in perfect shape.

Moore said the primary reason the curbs have been having so much trouble has to do the the substantial amount of sanding material that gets transported down First Street.

He said oftentimes this material winds up on the sidewalk and the moisture that builds up in this debris seeps into the curbs taking sand along with it, eventually freezing, expanding and thawing, leading to the damage they've seen over the years.

When the curbs were first installed, he said, MDT anticipated the design of the sidewalk would prevent this issue, but that didn't work out as hoped.

He said on top of the new fixes they will also be putting a better maintenance plan in place which will hopefully help prevent this kind of thing from happening again.

"Hopefully she'll be looking like she did back 15 years ago," Moore said.

He said they are also working on replacing some of the more problematic sidewalk panels to remove toe-catches, but warned that the primary focus of the project is curbs.

He also said they're using this opportunity to replace some of the ramps meant to help people with disabilities, some of which have been in rough shape.

As for traffic disruptions, Moore said the lane closures people have seen in the past week are similar to what they're going to see in the coming weeks.

He said when they start placing concrete people might see greater disruptions, but they try to do as much of that work in the early morning as possible, so hopefully the inconvenience will be minimal.

"For the most part, what you've seen is what it's been and what it probably will be for the rest of the job," he said.

Moore said the job has remained on schedule so far, and it is set to be substantially done in the third week of August.

He said they will need to come back later and paint the curbs, but there will be a 30-day wait between one project and the other.

He said he's putting out road reports each week on MDT's website, so if people want to get more up-to-date information on the project or traffic disruptions they can go to https://www.mdt.mt.gov/travinfo/construction.aspx .