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Night work to close lanes on Green Street
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Rough spots like this on E. E. Butler Parkway will be repaired during a resurfacing project on Butler and Green Street Sunday and Monday nights. The project will resurface the roads from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to the split at the Civic Center. - photo by Tom Reed

Maintenance roadwork is planned for Green Street and E.E. Butler Parkway, but traffic backups along the busy stretches shouldn't be a problem.

Portions of the roads will be closed Sunday and Monday nights for resurfacing, with one lane at a time closed from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. as weather permits.

The work will extend from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to where Ga. 11 and Ga. 60 split near the Gainesville Civic Center.

Georgia Department of Transportation maintenance crews will mill out damaged asphalt and replace it with new asphalt, said Todd McDuffie, engineer for the Gainesville-based District 1.

"We've planned work to occur overnight to minimize the impact and inconvenience to motorists," he said. "... We hope to complete the work in two nights and be finished by the morning commute Tuesday."

Green Street and E.E. Butler serve as a major artery through town, skirting the downtown district and carrying traffic to and from Interstate 985.

Average daily traffic on Green Street at Martin Luther King is 28,940 vehicles and at Park Hill Drive is 14,620.

The average daily traffic on E.E. Butler at Jesse Jewell Parkway is 27,010 vehicles, said Teri Pope, District 1 spokeswoman.

Crews were doing some resurfacing work about a month ago during the day "and (traffic) got too congested to (complete)," Pope said.

"It is unusual for a business section of roadway to carry as much heavy traffic (as those roads do)," she added.

"There are a lot of chicken trucks that use (it) and those ... can weigh up to 80,000 pounds each, so that definitely wears and tears on the roadway itself and helps it to break down faster."

As part of the effort, crews will be working on Green Street's drains, which tend to overflow in heavy rains.

"Because the street has been built up so much and resurfaced so many times, the roadway is actually about halfway up the drainage structures," Pope said.

Redoing the structures can be very costly "when we have a good budget," she added. "Now, it's just impossible. We are continuing to work with what we've got and make it work for us."