SAM DEAN The Roanoke Times

For the past six months, Appalachian Power Co. has had crews working to upgrade the company's underground distribution system in downtown Roanoke.

SAM DEAN The Roanoke Times

Contractors lay underground electrical pipe along Salem Avenue last week for the Appalachian Power Co. project. The construction on Salem Avenue is expected to be completed by mid-December.

For six months, driving in downtown Roanoke's west end has meant dodging traffic cones and taking circuitous, sometimes confusing detours as workers rip up pavement on Campbell and Salem avenues.

Pits have been dug deep enough to bury an elephant -- complete with mega-fencing to prevent pedestrians from falling in -- and there has been more than one scene involving motorists trying to find their way like mice in a maze.

So what's going on? The work is part of a $10 million Appalachian Power Co. project aimed at reinforcing the company's underground distribution system -- a complex network of wires, vaults, switches, fuses and loops that runs beneath the city streets like a high-voltage string of Christmas lights.

And the end of the construction may be in sight -- at least for the work next to the Roanoke City Jail, The Roanoke Times and condo complexes that line Salem Avenue. The excavation, which started in May, should be done by mid-December, Appalachian spokesman Todd Burns said.

An excavated vault -- housing underground electrical connections -- at the corner of Campbell Avenue and Third Street Southwest was filled in this week.

And on Thursday afternoon, three workers clad in fluorescent yellow vests watched as glop slid from a cement truck into a pit on Salem Avenue.

But the work's scars will remain on the streets of Roanoke. Underground ducts for additional lines -- running from a substation at Seventh Street down Rorer Avenue to Fourth Street, and then split and run down Salem Avenue and Campbell Avenue -- are evident based on a path of black pavement.

Burns said the work is intended partly to help meet the demand for extra power expected for the Taubman Museum of Art, as well as the new Social Security building under construction on Jefferson Street.

It's about reliability, too. Two transformers were relocated from spots that were submerged under water during the flood of 1985 to the Seventh Street Northwest substation, Burns said. Crews also moved previously exposed pieces of the downtown network underground with the rest of the lines.

"That reduces exposure to lightning, car accidents, animal-related outages, those kinds of things," Burns said.

A series of fires knocked out power to downtown households and businesses in the spring of 2003.

Burns said those incidents were unrelated to the work currently under way.

There is still another piece of the $10 million project yet to come. The substation is due for some work -- and perhaps more signs and detours, albeit in a less trafficked spot -- but that won't take place until 2010.