DURHAM – Motorists traveling on Route 136 in Durham will soon have a nice, smooth stretch of road to travel on as they head south into Freeport or north into Auburn.

But, as drivers have learned, the short-term price to pay for that is frequent slowdowns and stoppages through the work zone.

The good news is that the end is in sight. The project manager for the job said he expects the work, which is running on a 6-mile stretch of road from the Freeport town line to the Davis Road intersection, would be done by the end of this month.

While welcome news to Durham motorists, it won’t be the end of traffic delays on the road. A short distance north of the area being repaved, the state has closed one lane of Route 136 due to erosion to the embankment alongside the Androscoggin River – a closure that is expected to last for an extended time while crews work to stabilize the road.

Ted Coffin, the project manager for Gorham-based Glidden Excavating and Paving, the firm doing the paving project for the state Department of Transportation, said the work is far less extensive than the reconstruction of Route 136 in Freeport that was completed within the last couple of years.

In the case of the Durham section of the road, Coffin said, crews were not grinding up the existing roadbed. Instead, they first put on a thin coating of asphalt “to kind of straighten the road out,” and then laying down a 3?4-inch coating of asphalt to finish the job. In addition to the repaving, Coffin said, the company is also doing some “incidental drainage, ditch and shoulder work” as part of the project.

Standing alongside of the road on a hot day last week, Coffin said he hasn’t seen many problems with motorists traveling through the work zone. People have been obeying the flaggers stopping traffic and keeping speeds down through the work zone.

“Traffic has been real good, people have been real patient,” Coffin said. “We haven’t had any issues.”

Kathy Libby, who is overseeing the project for the Maine Department of Transportation, agreed that things were running smoothly.

“Traffic’s moving smoothly through it (the work zone),” she said. “There have been no complaints that I’ve heard.”

Libby added that it’s vital that drivers obey the instructions of the flaggers, while it may slow the flow of traffic down a bit, that’s better than having a collision between a car and a piece of heavy machinery working on the road.

“The traveling public is why we’re fixing the road,” Libby said. “We also want to get them through the job safely. That’s the most important (thing). We want to make sure they understand. We put our cones out and the flaggers are in the right position to direct traffic through the work zone safely. We don’t want any accidents.”

Crews from Glidden Excavating and Paving work on the repaving of Route 136 late last week. The work covers a 6-mile stretch from the Freeport town line to the Davis Road intersection. (Staff photo by Mike Higgins)