The final stretch of road destroyed by Hurricane Irene is set to reopen this week, four months after the Hurricane wrought havoc on transportation infrastructure all along the Northeast.
Route 107, a major east-west artery follows the course of a river that gushed over its banks during the storm, taking the road with it. You can see video of the damaged Route 107 and other damage here.
The AP reports: "In a storm that left a dozen Vermont towns cut off from the outside world for days, damaged or destroyed more than 500 miles of roads and 200 bridges, and reshaped much of the low-lying countryside, it was the Route 107 repair that posed the biggest single engineering challenge. The fix included 46 subcontractors and 20,000 hours of heavy equipment time."
Vermont Public Radio reports that rebuilding efforts of homes and other infrastructure is still underway, with some families who lost their homes living in RVs bracing for the cold bite of winter to come.
In the New York area, the Port Jervis line of the Metro-North Railroad took three months to repair. Both that, and the Route 107 rebuilding are evidence of the mounting price tag of climate-related costs for transit and transportation agencies.