The orange barricades that have lined long stretches of A1A from just north of Vero Beach city line to the Wabasso Causeway were removed last week, but the Florida Department of Transportation’s $6.7 million road-widening project isn’t done yet.
“No, it’s not over,” FDOT project spokeswoman Kathleen Dempsey said Monday. “We’re one step closer to completion, which is still scheduled for this summer, but we’ve still got work to do there.
“It’s still an active construction project.”
Dempsey said the barricades were removed because the repaving of that section of the island highway is complete and they’re no longer needed to redirect the flow of traffic, which has been “shifted back to normal.”
The remaining work includes installing “thermo-plastic striping” along the roadway and other punch-list items, as well as improvements at the intersection of A1A and the causeway, where some barricades still remain.
The removal of the barricades from the construction zone brings an end to the daily frustration felt by island residents who endured bumper-to-bumper backups during the daytime hours throughout the Vero Beach area’s busy season.
Too often during the project, which began in June, motorists mired in A1A traffic saw no tangible progress being made, prompting flurries of phone calls to Vero Beach 32963, local government officials and FDOT.
In early April, in fact, island residents were complaining that they hadn’t seen any significant work done – for any extended period, anyway – since before Christmas.
FDOT offered several explanations.
First, Dempsey cited “FDOT specifications,” which she said prohibit work being done from Dec. 24 through Jan. 2 “to avoid impacting traffic flow during the holidays.”
Then, in January, work was interrupted by what Dempsey described as “asphalt plant issues” that delayed the delivery of material needed to pave the roadway.
In early February, Dempsey said work had resumed two weeks earlier, but it was being done at night – between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m., Sunday through Thursday – to minimize the project’s impact on the island’s busy-season traffic flow.
However, island residents who contacted this newspaper said they saw little or no night work being done.
The reason, perhaps, was because work had been halted by rain and cold weather, particularly the January and February nights when local temperatures dipped into the 40s and 30s.
In late March, Dempsey said work had been suspended for three weeks because the site was being surveyed before crews would embark on the next phase of the pavement operation.
Paving resumed in early April, and FDOT officials continue to say the project, which includes the construction of 7-foot-wide bicycle lanes on both sides of a 6.74-mile stretch of A1A, is progressing ahead of schedule.
“We’re still scheduled for a summer 2021 completion,” Dempsey said, “but it might be sooner.”
