Friday, January 29, 1999

BANG! Road project BANG! deafening BANG!

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Pounding of pile drivers is driving downtowners nuts

The Cincinnati Enquirer

A worker adjusts a pile driver in the new Fort Washington Way trench. (Glenn Hartong photo) | ZOOM |

        Put in the earplugs, turn up the stereo or just get used to it.

        The relentless thumping of metal piles and the general demolition din of Fort Washington Way are not going to end soon.

        Aleisa Koester, a desktop publisher at Copy Cats on West Third Street, says the noise drives her “berserk.”

        But, she says, “I've become used to it.”

        Good thing. An estimated 7,100-plus piles are needed for the highway reconstruction.

        Each one of those needs 500 deafening whacks.

        With 15 percent of the piles in, it's about 754 hours of pounding down; 4,275 to go.

        Customers have offered employees at Olympic Auto Park on West Third Street earplugs, and downtown residents Maurine and Lyndon Langford turn on the radio and the humidifier so they can sleep.

        Crews limit the pile driving to traditional work hours of 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. but some demolition goes on overnight, said Don Gindling, the city's construction manager for the $146.9 million project. Crews are working to meet an August 2000 completion date.

        Mrs. Langford says she has to get up at 5 a.m. to get to work, and now her sleep is interrupted as often as three or four times a week.

        “It's so frustrating.”

       

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