Now, here’s something amazing — Oregon Department of Transportation is actually doing something decent.
Okay, the project itself is just more pointless bowing to our god, the Fish, but ODOT is handling it as well as can be.
ODOT is replacing a culvert on Highway 20 at Trout Creek with a bridge. The project started last week and will allow our god, the Fish, to travel upstream unhindered by the shallow water in the culvert.
The cost, at about $600,000, is a couple hundred thousand dollars lower than ODOT estimated for this particular project.
When project manager Jim Westbrook told the Sweet Home City Council that ODOT was trying to work on its image, it really may have been more than words.
Westbrook provided the council and area residents and businesses with two options for replacing the culvert.
One option, at about twice the price, would have turned Highway 20 into a one-lane road over Trout Creek most of the summer. This is the option ODOT would normally take rather than closing a highway completely.
The second option was to close the highway for two weeks in April with short periods of one-lane closures before and after the closure.
This idea was not normal thinking for ODOT, Westbrook said at a public meeting, but he was trying to think outside the box.
Now the project is underway, and Holm II Construction thinks it can get by only closing the highway for three days.
When residents and businesses heard about the project, many were unhappy with it. They definitely preferred a full closure of the highway in April to partial closure all summer long.
They expected that a summer-long closure would make travelers avoid Sweet Home entirely, and it would hamper their own travels through the area.
ODOT chose an option that would inconvenience the public the least.
ODOT was the organization where a frustrated engineer once informed business owners, who upset over the 1999 Highway 20 project, that ODOT right-of-way extends into storefronts and he could take a foot off the front of their buildings if necessary for the project.
In the midst of controversy over removing some parking spaces on Main Street, one ODOT committee actually considered striping the highway all the way through town with bike lanes.
ODOT’s track record in dealing with the public has been poor, admitted at least by Westbrook. To recognize it and try to do something about it is admirable.
With this project, ODOT communicated clearly with the public what it needed to accomplish. ODOT looked outside the box for the best idea, and ODOT listened to the public when it asked the public what it thought.
ODOT deserves praise for its common-sense approach to this project, which is more convenient and less costly to taxpayers.