Northern End Of Boggs Hill Road Reopens To Traffic

By Andrew Gorosko

Several motorists traveling on Boggs Hill Road on Tuesday afternoon expressed a sense of relief that the major north-south street has been reopened to through-traffic, following a drainage repair project that had been underway on its northern end since early October.

The project positioned a roadblock across Boggs Hill Road that prevented through-traffic from flowing on a quarter-mile section of the road lying between its intersections with Sugar Street and Deep Brook Drive.

The roadblock, in effect, had cut the direct link that the three-mile-long Boggs Hill Road creates between Sugar Street and Hattertown Road.

Fred Hurley, town public works director, said that the town reopened the northern end of Boggs Hill Road to traffic about 2 pm on Tuesday, allowing two-way traffic to flow on the road section that was closed for the $242,000 drainage construction project.

Mr Hurley said the construction project is about 98 percent complete, with only some guardrailing, landscaping, and cleanup work yet to be performed.

The project installed a new reinforced-concrete box culvert beneath the street through which a stream flows. That drainage structure replaces a steel culvert that had failed due to exposure to the elements. The new box culvert has a higher water-flow capacity than the structure it replaces.

The construction project included repaving a 275-foot-long section of the street where the drainage work occurred.

Shortly after the northern end of Boggs Hill Road was reopened to traffic, several school buses traveled southward and then northward on the street, dropping off students following their day at school.

Also, a town fire vehicle on an emergency call traveled both southward and northward on the reopened road section.

While the road section was closed to traffic, local emergency services personnel needed to take alternate routes when responding to emergency calls.