After Midnight

The adage “Nothing Good Ever Happens After Midnight” isn’t really true when it comes to the construction of the Gold Line Bus Rapid Transit (GLBRT) line on the East Side of St. Paul. As much as working overnight may not be a preferred way of life in the construction business, it does offer many benefits to the project. On the GLBRT project, we have worked numerous nights and weekends in order to demo bridges, set bridge girders, pour bridge decks, reconstruct high volume intersections and install storm sewers.

For the safety of the traveling public and to minimize traffic impacts, full closures of specific roadways are limited to weekends and overnights. As the traffic counts greatly decrease during these off-peak hours it affords the opportunity to completely close roadways, typically from 10pm until 5am, in order to accomplish certain activities. Night work can provide lots of project benefits, including no traffic below overhead work, better delivery times for ready-mix concrete during bridge deck pours and minimal traffic congestion for permit loads such as bridge girder delivery.

Weekend and nighttime road closures also afford the ability to excavate, install drainage and resurface roadways that are unable to be impacted during weekdays. We are able to close an intersection on a Friday evening thru Monday morning and have a freshly paved new intersection available for the Monday morning rush hour.