By Kathianne Boniello
Little Neck residents who had a difficult time navigating a maze of Con Edison work trucks that suddenly sprang up on Marathon Parkway last week can take heart: a company spokesman said this week the work should be finished by the end of the month.
Con Ed has been upgrading gas mains in the area, spokesman Joe Peta said Tuesday, increasing gas capacity and reliability but also blocking traffic.
A wide swath of busy Marathon Parkway has been torn up by the Con Ed work between Beechknoll Avenue and Gaskell Road, taking up nearly one of the road’s two lanes and forcing drivers to slow to a crawl as they approach the narrow intersection of Northern Boulevard and Marathon Parkway.
Peta said “the work that we’re doing is to reinforce and upgrade a gas main in Marathon Parkway, and it should be going on until the end of March.”
The spokesman also said the work should increase the reliability of the gas service in the area.
The company is replacing an older 6-inch gas main in Marathon Parkway with a 12-inch main, said Peta, who described the work as a “fairly big project.”
As Con Ed upgrades the Marathon Parkway gas main residents can expect to see trucks pop up on side streets as well, Peta said.
“There are two parts to the gas system: mains and services,” he said. “Services are branches off the main, and some of the branches also need to be replaced to accommodate the size of the new main.”
That’s what the residents of nearby Deepdale Avenue found out about two weeks ago, when three Con Ed crews tore up different sections of the same block.
“There will be other areas where they will be branching off,” Peta said. “It’s not emergency work.”
Reach reporter Kathianne Boniello by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 146.
