Thorndike Street ready for its debut

The fifth and final stage of the Lord Overpass project included line striping of Thorndike and Dutton Streets and adjacent interchanges on July 31, 2023. A RoadSafe worker paints the edge line on the Fletcher Street. (Melanie Gilbert/Lowell Sun)

The fifth and final stage of the Lord Overpass project included line striping of Thorndike and Dutton Streets and adjacent interchanges on July 31, 2023. A RoadSafe worker gets ready to line paint the crosswalk at Fletcher Street. (Melanie Gilbert/Lowell Sun)

Errol Charette, of RoadSafe Traffic Systems, grooves the lane and line markings for line painting on July 31, 2023. The work is the fifth and final stage of the Lord Overpass project. (Melanie Gilbert/Lowell Sun)

Chris Reagan, left, and Errol Charette in front of their RoadSafe Traffic Systems truck on July 31, 2023. They were grooving the roadway markings for the line painting. The work is the fifth and final stage of the Lord Overpass project. (Melanie Gilbert/Lowell Sun)

The fifth and final stage of the Lord Overpass project included line striping on July 31, 2023. A heavy-duty street sweeper on Thorndike Street prepares the pavement for painting after the line grooving. (Melanie Gilbert/Lowell Sun)

The fifth and final stage of the Lord Overpass project as seen on July 31, 2023, shows construction barrels stacked for pickup on the corner of Thorndike and Middlesex Streets as workers ready to open all car and bus lanes. (Melanie Gilbert/Lowell Sun)

The fifth and final stage of the Lord Overpass project included line striping on July 31, 2023. Looking west on Thorndike Street at Chelmsford Street shows how the May plantings are coming in. (Melanie Gilbert/Lowell Sun)

The fifth and final stage of the Lord Overpass project included line striping on July 31, 2023. Looking west on Thorndike Street shows how the May plantings are coming in. (Melanie Gilbert/Lowell Sun)

The fifth and final stage of the Lord Overpass project included new sidewalks and plantings in the area around Kazanjian Square at the corner of Dutton and Fletcher Streets on July 31, 2023. (Melanie Gilbert/Lowell Sun)

LOWELL — The Lord Overpass construction project is in its long-awaited homestretch. Line painting and final traffic-flow adjustments are taking place this week, and the redesigned Thorndike Street, which was elevated 16 feet to replace the obsolete overpass design, will open its bus lanes later this month.

Construction contractor ET&L has been on the project since March 2020, and Superintendent Travis Ward said the break in the suffocating daytime temperatures and stormy weather pushed the project over the finish line.

“We finally got a break in the weather,” he said. “Last week was pretty brutal. We were actually working nights.”

On Monday, the company, which works on heavy highway and bridge construction projects, was overseeing the final line striping by RoadSafe, a traffic control and pavement marking company. The white-line pavement markings indicate traffic patterns, crosswalks and roadway edges.

“The recessed markings go first, then paint afterwards,” Ward said. “It’s going to be an all-day project.”

As if on cue, a massive line-striping machine lumbered into view coming around the Fletcher Street corner onto Thorndike Street.

The operator sat high above the road at the back of the behemoth machine applying a fine spray of white paint to a pre-grooved surface.

That noisy and dirty prep work was done by the two-man team of Chris Reagan and Errol Charette.

“First, we recess the pavement,” Reagan said. “That way the paint can sit in that groove. Instead of the lines being above the pavement, they’re even with the pavement.”

When the paint wears out, the area can be relined without the paint stacking higher and higher than the pavement itself, Reagan explained.

Charette fired up a concrete scarifier, a machine that aggressively and noisily grinds down concrete. A cloud of dust filled the air.

“Every line that gets put in gets grooved,’ Reagan said. “The only thing that doesn’t get grooved are the ‘Onlys’ and the arrows.”

Reagan used a power blower to clear the grooved area, a street sweeper came through to remove any other debris, followed by the two-man line-painting crew spraying down the thermoplastic markings.

According to mechanic Brian Jusczak, thermoplastic comes in a powder form. The powder is poured into a chute on the truck, heated to a melting point and turned into a spray-type paint. The massive truck holds six pallets or 12,000 pounds of the 70-pound thermoplastic bags.

Jusczak, who was born in Lowell, was on hand to keep the sprayer spraying.

“I fix the broken stuff when it happens,” he said. “Keep the project on track.”

The Lord Overpass was originally constructed in 1959 as a grade-separated interchange comprised of four closely spaced, signalized intersections with a counter-clockwise rotary circulation pattern.

A 2017 memo from then-Assistant City Manager and Department of Planning and Development Director Diane Tradd noted that the “current layout of the Overpass does not meet the current city needs.”

She cited pedestrian safety, inefficient traffic patterns and bisected streets as obstacles to the major artery from reaching its full potential as a gateway to Lowell. The DPD described the overpass as “functionally and structurally deficient.” The City Council approved the design by a 9-0 vote in 2017.

The 0.3-mile construction stretch (roughly 1,500 feet of pavement) is a high-traffic zone with an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 vehicles passing through every day. That stretch of the road goes right past the Lowell Justice Center on one side and the Gallagher Transportation Terminal, a bus and commuter rail station, on the other.

More than 55,000 cubic yards of dirt were used to fill in and raise Thorndike Street to make the intersection with Appleton, Chelmsford and Middlesex streets all at one level, thereby eliminating the overpass. The Massachusetts Department of Transportation provided $15 million for the project, with $13.2 million of this for construction. Nearly $1 million was used for the fill portion of the project. The city covered the reminder of the estimated $21.6 million cost.

In May, the landscaping firm of CSL Inc. placed thousands of plants in the median and crosswalk strips along Thorndike between Appleton and Fletcher streets. Almost three months later, the transformation from hard-scrabble dirt spaces to verdant oases was complete.

City Manger Tom Golden credited lots of hands with the successful completion of the construction project.

“This is a collaboration of State and City dollars for the 5th and final phase,” he wrote by text. “The intersection with Fletcher Street will be reopened to allow enhanced access to the Acre. The exclusive Bus lanes are one of the first of their kind in the Commonwealth and show our dedication to Complete Streets design. This will improve the efficiency of the LRTA. The state-of-the-art signal system will prioritize traffic flow through the corridor. The landscaped shared paths provide safe and attractive travel alternatives for our residents.”

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Thorndike Street ready for its debut