This is just a brief update on the Draper Bikeway. I’m not going to pretend these posts have any influence whatsoever on the progress of this thing, but the crews have been out fixing some of the things I noted in previous articles about the project.
This is the current end of the trail below the dam, where the survey stakes stopped. Farther back a ways up the trail there is a section that runs through an area where they can’t yet cut the trail. There’s a separate project nearing completion that appears to house pumps and gates for different pipelines running away from the dam, and that includes an awful lot of dirt work. Their temporary dirt dump is right where the bikeway runs. When the contractors release that project, the dirt dump will have been graded out and can be prepped for the trail.
There were several shots I couldn’t get because there are machines now all over the place working those areas, so I couldn’t get in there and take pictures. It looks like the swamp actually does have a drain, but the culvert had been blocked for years and invisible. Today it was open and the swamp was drained. I spotted several recently cleared culverts in places where I thought there were none.
The asphalt spreader continues southward on the west side of lake. Here it sits waiting for a dump truck loaded with hot asphalt to roll up and back against it. The two inch forward in tandem as the truck slowly dumps the hot asphalt into the hopper on the front of this beast. Somewhere back down the trail is a large twin roller (front and rear axle) to insure the surface is packed and smooth. Still farther back was a large sweeper working the section that had been flooded by the swamp.
Aside from diggers and bulldozers actively working some areas that need a huge amount of build-up, I saw someone working that corner where I criticized how the trail was almost a meter below the surrounding ground level. All the surface was being removed down to the level of the trail. I’ve never seen it done in that order. More often the crews would do the leveling work first and then lay the trail. Oddly enough, I also saw evidence of some work done to dress up a couple of places where the trail crossed a paved road. That’s usually done with much smaller machines, like those larger Bobcats. Most of the machines out at Draper are quite large, such as a Caterpillar D6T with an 8-foot wide dozer blade.
I’m still waiting to see the survey stakes for the portion not yet even begun, mostly along old Westminster Road.
