City Engineer Leon Barba last night warned motorists that for about a year and a half, beginning shortly after Labor Day, driving on North Burleson Street will likely be "painful for our citizens" due the reconstruction activities taking place along that thoroughfare.
Two projects — the widening of Burleson and extending Marketplace Avenue from Burleson to the southbound I-35 frontage road — will begin almost simultaneously, Barba said, with the Marketplace project finishing much sooner than the Burleson repairs. In addition, once the project is complete, Burleson will end at a cul-de-sac just south of the low water crossing, thus eliminating the direct access to Burleson from the frontage road, the site of numerous traffic accidents including at least one fatality.
Barba told the City Council last night that the original estimate for the Burleson Street project, one of a handful of major road repairs Kyle voters signed off on with the approval of a bond package in 2013, was $8.1 million. The winning bid, he said, was $6.6 million and last night the council approved in a 5-0 vote (council members Damon Fogley and Daphne Tenorio missed last night’s meeting) awarding a contact not to exceed $6.9 million to M.A. Smith, an Austin-based contractor. The second lowest bid, Barba said, was $7.6 million, The reason for a contract amount that’s higher than the bid amount is that the contract includes a 5 percent contingency to cover, in Barba’s words, "surprises we didn’t anticipate."
"We did check on the credentials for the (winning) contractor," Barba said. "The contractor actually did a project for the city of Kyle — the wastewater line that led to ACC and, according to inspectors, they did a great job."
Barba said he expects work on the project to begin "right after Labor Day" at the southwest corner of the City Square and be completed sometime "in the spring of 2020." He also said the fork in the southbound frontage road that currently allows for a direct access to Burleson will remain "open" until the cul-de-sac is completed even though the Marketplace Avenue access will also be an available alternative as soon as right around the first of the year.
"Out contractor that’s going to be working on Burleson Street is going to have some big issues to work with," Barba said. "He’s got some small businesses that need all the business that they can get and we’re going to be closing sections of the road along that area. As we move on down the road toward the roundabout there’s sections of road that we’ll be closing also. It’s going to be painful for our citizens because of this construction. We’re estimating 15 to 18 months on that project so it’s going to be a painful process as we go through building that road."
He also said the railroad crossing at Burleson will be rebuilt by a contractor hired by the railroad and it is planned that its work will be completed right about the time the city’s contractor work on Burleson reaches the crossing. "There’s a big coordination project involved with that," Barba said.
The city’s engineer said the original estimate to extend Marketplace to I-35 was $800,000 and the bids came in considerably below that with a $613,244.73 contract approved, again by a 5-0 vote, last night.
"We plan to start this one in September also so we can get it knocked out before the end of the year," Barba told the council. "If weather permits, that could happen, but with the weather and the holidays we’re thinking that by January or February at the most we’ll see that road opened up."
Barba said the city is in discussions with the Texas Department of Transportation concerning installing a deceleration lane along the southbound I-35 frontage road leading to the Marketplace intersection. "That takes time to get that done," Barba said, which means that for the foreseeable future a 90-degree more or less turn off a road with a posted speed limit of 50 miles an hour, arguably not that much safer than the current configuration.
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