Portland last week levied fines against two construction contractors for blocking traffic lanes amid an already exasperating summer for commuters.

The Portland Bureau of Transportation said Columbia Construction Service had reduced westbound Burnside Street to one lane in downtown Portland on July 31 during morning rush hour.

And Turner Construction, the bureau said, closed two lanes of Southwest 12th Avenue last Thursday. Its permit allowed the closure of only the right lane.

Turner is working on a six-story office building at Southwest 12th Avenue and Morrison Street valued at nearly $11 million. The nature of Columbia Construction's work wasn't immediately clear; the company's state license number wasn't directly associated with a project in the area.

Each company was fined $500. The bureau said building inspections won't be conducted until the fine is paid. Bureau spokesman John Brady said that if a contractor racks up enough violations, they can have their permit revoked or be blocked from getting future permits for up to a year.

Dan Harmon, Turner Construction's operations manager for Portland, said a subcontractor had "briefly" taken over the second lane.

?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"? "As soon as we found out that they were doing that, we went down and corrected it," he said. "PBOT elected to issue the fine, which is perfectly reasonable."

A spokeswoman for Columbia Construction acknowledged the fine and said a check had been mailed to pay it.

Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who oversees the transportation bureau, said in a statement that the companies showed "blatant disregard for the public."

"For a private construction company to block a lane during rush hour, delaying thousands of people and undermining our efforts to reduce traffic congestion is unacceptable," Saltzman said in the statement. "We will hold them accountable."

It came at a time when construction projects, and in particular public work projects, have have caused headaches.

Several Portland city bureaus, Multnomah County and TriMet announced an effort earlier this year to coordinate their construction projects and minimize their impact.

Nonetheless, the summer has been trying for commuters thanks to lane reductions and periodic closures on the Morrison Bridge, repairs to the Broadway Bridge that closed lanes, Burnside Bridge repairs that closed Interstate 5 and rail work that disrupted MAX and Portland Streetcar service.

The city has created an online map of all the projects.

-- Elliot Njus

enjus@oregonian.com

503-294-5034

@enjus