Major sections of Ocean View Drive in Yachats are scheduled for paving Thursday and Friday, Sept. 5-6.
The paving is the next step in a years-long process of Lincoln County turning over ownership of the road and Marine Drive to the city of Yachats.
On Thursday, crews from Road & Driveway of Newport will put down a 2-inch layer of asphalt from West Seventh Street to Yachats State Park. That section of the road will be closed to all traffic so paving can be done in one day, said Roy Kinion, county public works director.
On Friday, the contractor will pave Ocean View Drive from the park to U.S. Highway 101. One lane of traffic will be open while paving that section.
The agreement between the county and city calls for a 14-foot-wide lane for vehicles and an 8-foot-wide lane for pedestrians. The county will put down temporary striping and then come back in several years after Yachats does a transportation study to put down permanent stripes. In approving the paving contract Wednesday, Lincoln County commissioners said they didn’t want the striping commitment to extend beyond 2-3 years.
The final, legal and formal transfer of the road to Yachats is now scheduled for the commission’s Oct. 30 meeting.
When finished paving is finished, the Yachats City Council has decided that traffic will be one way southbound from Seventh Street to Second Street and the state park. For now, two-way traffic on one lane of asphalt – with yield signs – will be allowed on Ocean View Drive from the state park to Pontiac Street.
Striping the road will come later in the fall, said Kinion.
And, after months of waiting, Kinion told county commissioners Wednesday that a state archeologist has given it approval to install guardrails along stretches of Ocean View Drive between Second and Fourth streets. Even though there are existing guardrails, they have to be moved east to the edge of the pavement and away from an ocean cliff. But the section of road has many Native American shell mounds underneath it and the county needed state approval before digging guardrail holes.
Kinion estimates the county’s cost of improvements to Ocean View Drive at about $250,000 before turning it over to the city. That includes improvements to the 804 Trail, repairing culverts, patching parts of the road prior to paving, and guardrail replacement. The paving contract is for $69,976 – just $3,000 more than an engineer’s estimate for the work.
“The finishing of the asphalt is a big step, but it’s not the end of the project,” Kinion said. “The end is somewhat in sight.”
