Our old friend Greg Sakas is back in the news.
Havelock, North Carolina - from www.enctoday.com -— John Thomas sat with a hot cup of coffee at Dunkin Donuts on Monday, a few hundred feet from where workers bundled against the cold went about the business of fixing the railroad crossing on East Main Street in Havelock.
With the highway in front of the restaurant closed for the construction, Thomas got to the restaurant from the back entrance from Roosevelt Boulevard. You “just got to deal with it,” he said of the detour around the blocked section of highway.
And that’s what most residents did.
Drivers experienced few problems and only minor traffic backups on Monday, thanks in part to a coordinated effort by Havelock, Cherry Point, Department of Transportation and Norfolk Southern officials to publicize detour routes and warn drivers of possible delays.
Thomas said he didn’t mind the detour.
“They needed to fix it,” he said of the railroad crossing. “It would throw your car out of alignment.
“As long as it gets fixed, that’s all that matters. They could be in here (working) for a week as far as I’m concerned, just as long as they get it fixed.”
Officials blocked the road at 7 a.m. Monday and went right to work pulling out a section of the old railroad track. The crossing had become so bad that signs warning drivers of the bump at the crossing were erected at the site.
The work is scheduled to be complete by Wednesday, with the section of highway reopening by Thursday morning, weather permitting.
Detour routes are set up along Fontana and Roosevelt boulevards, with Cherry Point traffic diverted to the Slocum gate in western Havelock and the Cunningham gate just beyond the main gate on Fontana Boulevard.
Havelock police and DOT officials monitored traffic throughout the day.
“Given all the cooperation we had with DOT and the railroad and the base personnel, we still had to account for a large volume of traffic being shifted from a four-lane highway down to two lanes of traffic, and that transition, given all things considered, went pretty smooth, with the exception of a few small problems that created a back up for us,” Havelock Police Chief G. Wayne Cyrus said.
“The base officials worked with us, and that eliminated a great deal of our concerns by staggering shift times on the base and directing personnel as to which gate to enter the base.”
Like coronary bypass veins installed by a surgeon to move blood around a clogged artery, traffic moved slowly but surely through the detour to avoid a blockage as workers repaired the railroad crossing in the heart of Havelock.
The operation wasn’t without pain though.
Businesses near the railroad crossing and inside of the detour zone were left without customers.
“It’s been really slow,” said Madrika Turner, of Newport, a worker at Dunkin Donuts. “Some of our regulars haven’t even been in here. People see the detour and just say ‘forget it.’”
The restaurant let one of its employees go home early because of the lack of customers.
At Perpetual Bliss, an adult boutique located next to the tracks, the detours left owner Greg Sakas angry.
“We hadn’t had one customer,” he said on Monday afternoon.
Sakas said the railroad should have waited until after Christmas to do the work.
“Of all the places and all the times, it’s Christmas,” he said. “I can’t believe they decided to do it now. Why couldn’t they wait? Business is bad anyway, and now this. Whoever did the planning doesn’t care about small businesses.”
Teresa Shaddix, a manager at the store, said military personnel get paid Wednesday for the last time before Christmas, and the timing isn’t good for the business.
“All these businesses right here on this block are going to miss out,” she said.
Sakas said he planned to write a letter of complaint to Norfolk Southern over the timing of the closure.
