By James Hanlon
Leader Staff Writer
The M-24 construction project will not be finished until early December, the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) announced in a Sept. 25 press release. The project, which began in mid-April had been scheduled to finish in mid-November.
“Remaining work includes underground sewer work in Oxford and roadway paving,” the press release stated. “This type of work always requires flexibility in the schedule as it is greatly affected by the amount of underground utilities and weather. Barring such delays, work is expected to be complete in early December.”
The project has been delayed mainly because of unexpected utilities encountered while installing storm sewer.
“Many of the utilities were unknown and in our way and hence had to be removed and relocated by the utility company,” MDOT Project Engineer, Brain Travis said. “We also ran into utilities that were known, but were in such close proximity to the sewer line that they either had to be moved or worked around. These instances required crews to either stop and redesign the pipe to avoid utilities, or completely stop work for hours or days while the utility was abandoned, removed or relocated.
“Other instances required the crews to pick up and move to another location and work out of sequence after determining it would take too much time to wait for the lines to be relocated. Utility delays are not uncommon for this type of work. Despite our best efforts to relocate utilities before the project began, an old road like this can have many more that are unknown to both MDOT and the utility companies. Unfortunately when building a project of this size in one season, every day is critical and small delays to crews can greatly affect the schedule.”
Travis said that weather has played less of a factor so far, but likely will in October and November when they are trying to pave. “We wanted to prepare everyone now that the project will likely finish a little later than we originally planned,” he said.
MDOT is investing $33 million to rebuild and resurface M-24 (Lapeer Road) in Oakland County between Goldengate St. in Orion Township and Harriet St. in Oxford Township, with the villages of Oxford and Lake Orion also being affected.
The southbound lane of M-24 is open (on the east side of the road) from Harriet St. to Drahner Rd. Northbound traffic is detoured to eastbound Drahner Rd., then northbound Oxford Lake Dr. to Glaspie St., then to Ray Road.
Currently, workers from Dan’s Excavating, Inc. are installing a 7,065-foot, 18-inch diameter sanitary sewer line on the west side of M-24.

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