CLEVELAND — Were you stuck in traffic on I-480 this morning? Maybe you were late to work or getting the kids to school and couldn't figure out why. The Ohio Department of Transportation says wet concrete is to blame.
"I saw a joke on Twitter it was backed up to Indiana," said Brent Kovacs, Public Information Officer ODOT District 12.
Kovacs continued, "it was backed up to Ridge if not a little further. It was far."
ODOT said that this project has been working overnight all summer long. Crews have been repairing side walls and the driving surface. But this morning, their concrete mix didn't set.
"It usually sets up in about three hours, but around 6 o'clock, they reopened the road and realized the concrete hadn't fully cured," said Kovacs.
News 5 asked ODOT if it was too cold to cure the concrete. Kovacs said, "It's hard to say. We don't know if the concrete they used was not the correct concrete or if it was too cold or something like that, but we haven't had any problem so far with the repairs, but for whatever reason, we did last night."
ODOT said the contractor on the project is Catts Construction. News 5 reached out to the company for comment and has yet to hear back.
"Our contractor, we are going to be fining up to about $180,000 for this morning's mishap," Kovacs said. "They cannot be on the road past 6 o clock in the morning, and they have to get off the road, get their work done. So, if they need to plan extra time for extra testing or extra curing, that's up to them. We take blocking these lanes very seriously and we will be penalizing our contractor for being on the road too long."
