Over the past several months the City of Puyallup has been conducting a road construction project on Pioneer right outside of Aylen Junior High.
Aylen Junior High principal, Kevin Mensonides, discussed the reason why the construction project had been taking place.
“The City of Puyallup was placing some storm water drain pipes running from Fourth Avenue to Pioneer. The pipes were 48 inches in diameter, pretty large pipes,” Mensonides said. “[The construction] was supposed to start right after school got out and then wrap up prior to the beginning of school but they ran into some problems.”
Because of the extra time needed to complete the project, Mensonides received a great deal of complaints as the project reportedly hindered some student’s ability to get to school on time.
“After the start of school, there were some significant delays in trying to get kids to school because they limited our access to the school to just one street. [Students] could no longer access the building from Pioneer as they closed that section of the road and we could only [access the road] from Fourth Avenue so that created some pretty lengthy backups,” Mensonides said.
Senior Carin Sauer struggled with getting to school on time because she had to take her sister to Aylen before attending her classes.
“[My sister and I] tried to get there early enough so that the guys were not standing outside. If we got there after that then it probably took about 10 more minutes to get through because then they were stopping everyone and the kids were crossing,” Sauer said.
Mensonides reflected on the benefits that he has noticed since the construction has ended on Pioneer.
“They are not exactly 100 percent finished yet– they still have to do some little things but it is a lot better. Traffic flows a lot nicer. The road has been refinished so it is a lot nicer than driving over dirt roads like we had been for several months,” Mensonides said.
Construction on Fourth Avenue has concluded and the road is now available for use.