As the Labor Day weekend approached and much of the region prepared to travel or relax, transportation crews across Mobile County were about to reshape a busy intersection. Starting the Tuesday after the holiday, the junction of Three Notch Road at Dawes Lane and Dawes Lane Extension was set to close for roughly two months so workers could finish the county’s second roundabout.
A two-month closure for the roundabout
The closure was scheduled to begin Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2014, with detour signs posted to route drivers around the work zone. The project marked the second roundabout to be built in Mobile County, part of an ongoing effort to rethink how traffic moves through certain intersections.
The timing was deliberate. The Alabama Department of Transportation planned to pull all crews from all projects by noon on the Friday before the holiday weekend, returning to work the following Tuesday. That meant travelers hitting the road for Labor Day would not have to contend with active work zones, even as the roundabout closure waited just on the other side of the weekend.
A downtown street set to reopen
Elsewhere, drivers were about to get some relief. Royal Street between Dauphin and Conti streets in downtown Mobile was expected to reopen before the weekend after an emergency sewer repair had closed the section the previous week.
A busy slate of road work
The roundabout was only one item on a long list of ALDOT projects underway across the Mobile and Baldwin County area. Among the work in progress:
- SR-163: Resurfacing and safety widening began that Monday, with daytime work scheduled for 35 working days and the possibility of finishing early if the weather held.
- Interstate 10: The ramp to Battleship Parkway, damaged in a fiery accident on July 31, remained closed.
- Interstate 10 from Halls Mill Creek to the George C. Wallace Tunnel: Road and bridge work was just getting started, with nighttime lane closures and completion expected the following summer.
- Interstate 65 in Saraland: Road and bridge work was about 95 percent complete, with only minor evening impacts.
- U.S. 90 from Halls Mill to Pine Hill Drive: Resurfacing was beginning, with nighttime lane closures and completion expected by December.
Work reaching into Baldwin County
The projects extended across the bay as well. On Alabama 181, resurfacing from U.S. 31 to south of U.S. 90 was creating nighttime lane closures, with the work expected to be complete by October. Near the coast, the Little Lagoon Pass bridge remained under construction and was about 50 percent complete, served in the meantime by a detour bridge expected to stay in place until the end of 2014. Work on the Interstate 10 connector to the Baldwin Beach Express was about 90 percent finished, with occasional lane closures on County Road 83.
Taken together, the roundup captured a region in the midst of steady road building and repair. For drivers, the immediate takeaway was straightforward: enjoy an unimpeded holiday weekend, then plan around the new roundabout work and the scattered lane closures that would resume once the crews returned. The second roundabout at Three Notch Road and Dawes Lane stood as the most visible of those changes, a project that would keep a key intersection closed well into the fall before reopening in a new configuration.