PORT TOWNSEND — Construction barriers at the city’s second roundabout at Sims Way and Thomas Street were taken down and the street was completely opened to traffic Thursday, on the eve of the beginning of the busy Memorial Day weekend.
Traffic had been reduced to single lanes at times while contractor Seton Construction finished work on the roundabout and traffic islands leading to it.
“There’s some more median work to do,” City Engineer Dave Peterson said Thursday, warning that traffic would be reduced to alternating single-lane passage until that part of the job was completed from McPherson Street toward Cliff Street.
Work on the Sims Way-Thomas Street roundabout took a few days more than a month to complete.
Work on the second roundabout followed the April opening of the first Sims Way-Howard Street roundabout at the other end of the $7.1 million Upper Sims traffic and streetscape project.
The project will be completed in June, sooner than expected, Peterson said, with a final layer of pavement to be laid in three weeks.
“They’ve been working real had to get traffic flowing. They really have,” Peterson said of Jefferson County-based contractor Seton Construction, which has been working on the project since early October.
The project adds center medians, sidewalks and landscaping, widening the main state Highway 20 entrance into town in moves intended to make the street more accessible to pedestrians and bicyclists.
The Thomas Street roundabout was scheduled to open in mid-June, but the contractor stepped up work to complete it before the weekend.
Landscaping and the construction of traffic islands on the Taylor Street roundabout will continue during June, with final paving scheduled for later in the month.
As a final step, the surfaces will get another 4 inches of asphalt, which will bring the road to the same height as the bottom of the curb.
During the final paving, traffic again will be reduced to one lane, city officials said.
When completed, the median separating the Sims Way lanes between Howard and Thomas streets will have only two openings for left turns.
Eastbound traffic will be allowed to turn left across Sims Way into Cliff Street leading to the Port Townsend Business Park and westbound traffic will be able to turn left into Alder Street.
Storm water will be treated and detained with ecology embankments and two storm-water detention and treatment ponds.
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Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
