ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – People who live, work and drive by the I-25 construction at Montgomery will soon be feeling the vibrations.

A giant pile driver will soon begin setting the steel pillars for bridge reconstruction. It might not be music to your ears, but this part of the project will be more than a one-hit wonder.

Most of what you hear out here in the I-25 construction zone is traffic, but get ready for a lot more noise – the kind you can feel.

“We’ll be pile driving starting this week all the way through mid-November,” said NMDOT spokesperson Kimberly Gallegos. “But with us driving those big steel piles into the ground, it is going to be kind of noisy.”

Sound levels on the project so far have normally been about 80 decibels. When the pile driving starts, it’ll be closer to 130 decibels. That’s louder than a rock concert or a dog barking in your ear, and you’ll feel it.

It’s the loudest part of the project, and the plan is to work during the day.

“But if anything comes up safety wise, we will move it to a nighttime operation. And we’ll send out an alert through text or email just to alert them. But just bear with us, we will be monitoring the noise and vibration throughout the duration of the pile driving,” said Gallegos. 

Click here to sign up for emails and text alerts if they have night plans. Hopefully by Thanksgiving, people who live and work around the area will be grateful to get back to the soothing sounds of traffic.

Some of the loudest work begins in earnest next week. That’s also when workers will start to close a lane of both Frontage roads between Montgomery and Jefferson.

They’ll be working on the part of I-25 that goes over the North Diversion Channel. Those closures will last all the way through next August.