Bloomingdale Trail Construction Continues This Weekend On Ashland Avenue

By Lisa White in News on Mar 28, 2014 4:30PM

(Western Ave Bloomingdale Trial Construction from The 606 Facebook Page)

If you regularly use Ashland Avenue between North Avenue and Armitage Avenue, make plans for alternate routes this weekend. The third stage of bridge improvements and construction related to the Bloomingdale Trail project will cause weekend closures today through Sunday.

Ashland Avenue will be closed to all traffic between North and Armitage Avenues with detours marked for vehicles and pedestrians. This includes the CTA's #9 Ashland bus, which will be detoured east to Elston Ave. Pedestrians and bicyclists will be asked to detour to Marshfield Avenue during the construction.

Crews will start work at 8 p.m. on Friday March 28 and will work around the clock to complete this stage of the project. The street will reopen no later than 5 a.m. on Monday March 31. If the project is finished earlier, they'll reopen Ashland Ave earlier as well.

After crews remove the bridge that is in place at Ashland Ave, they'll relocate it to the Walsh Park expansion area. There they will clean the bridge, assess the structural integrity and give it a fresh coat of paint. As long as there are no unforeseen issues, the bridge will then be moved to Western Ave to replace the bridge they tore down earlier this month. Construction to install the rehabbed bridge will be on the weekend of April 18-20 if all goes well. Parts of the Bloomingdale Trial project includes a focus on being both environmentally friendly and helping to stay cost-efficient by reusing some materials, like adapting the Ashland Ave bridge to replace the demolished Western Ave one.

This is the third bridge removal this month with the Bloomingdale Trial project. Both previous projects finished ahead of their projected work period.