JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A trio of detours causing headaches for Mandarin drivers was down to two by late morning Friday.
JEA said a water main break that had caused the closure of traffic lanes on San Jose Boulevard near Claire Lane for a third day has been repaired, and all lanes have reopened.
Crews were finishing asphalt patches Friday morning, leaving the left southbound and turn lane and the northbound turn lane closed until about 11:15 a.m.
The closures started on Wednesday afternoon when crews began repairs on the cracked 24-inch water main. Around 10:30 a.m. Thursday, the crews located the crack and had to make repairs in a trench that had grown to 17 feet deep.
Just before 11 a.m. Thursday, News4JAX got word that all southbound lanes of San Jose Boulevard would be closed around the area to protect the workers as they made repairs.
The inside turn lane closest to the median also remained closed northbound.
Drivers should use caution in the area and prepare to tack on some time to their commute.
The issue on San Jose, one of Mandarin’s main thoroughfares, has been worsened by a planned closure on Greenland Road between Philips Highway and Fayal Drive. The closure is for repairs and maintenance of the Florida East Coast Railway crossing.
Many Mandarin-area drivers use Greenland to cut through to Philips Highway to avoid early morning interstate traffic, but with that route shut down, they’re being forced to turn around, and rather than head southeast on Old St. Augustine Road, many are continuing west down Loretto Road to San Jose to get to I-295, where they’re running into the lane closures backing up traffic at Claire Lane.
The Greenland closure is slated to last until at least Friday.
In addition to these issues, the small bridge on Julington Creek Road is also closed, causing another detour in the Mandarin area. That closure is for three months while the bridge west of Hood Landing Road is repaired.
According to a JEA spokesperson, customers’ potable water was not impacted by the water main break. The spokesperson sent this statement:
JEA has built and continues to build our Transmission and Distribution water grids with redundancy to help prevent major outages to customers. In this case, crews were able to isolate the break with in-line valves that prevented interruption to our customers. This is not always possible with all sections of the water grid, but we remain focused on providing reliable and continued service.