|
Transportation
Desiard Street Deconstructed
Monroe street widening project is resequenced midstream
(southcentral.construction.com,
September 2006 issue)
By James
Gordon
Though long overdue and highly anticipated,
a road-widening project in Monroe, La. had to be resquenced
in the middle of construction.
Timing the tasks according to their
most suitable seasons and redrawing the original engineering
plans due to unaccounted underground utility lines caused
the project managers to reconfigure the prescribed construction
sequence.
Spokesmen for general contractor Merrick
Construction Co. of Cottonport, La., said the $13.5 million
job that began in May has an expected completion date in late
October.
The project focuses on a 1.1-mi. section
of U.S. Highway 80, or Desiard Street, that runs along the
south side of the University of Louisiana at Monroe's campus.
The roadway is being expanded from four to five lanes between
its three-way intersection with Gilbert Street at the east
end and its five-way intersection with Louisville Avenue (or
U.S. Highway 165), Powell Avenue and Sterlington Road on the
west end.
The project was let for bid in December
2004 and Cain Merrick, vice president and part owner of Merrick
Construction, said the contract it ultimately won was especially
large for his 60-year-old company.
"Normally, when we do street-widening
projects like this, it is in the $4 million to $5 million
range," Merrick said.
Along with the fat contract came the
two perennial difficulties of tackling an urban street project
of this magnitude: underground utility lines and traffic management.
Merrick said the project was divided
into two sequences. The first to be completed was the widening
of the roadway east of Desiard Street's intersection with
University Avenue, which cuts through nearly at the halfway
point of the project. The second sequence required tearing
out the existing roadway west of University Avenue., laying
9 in. of class 2 base course and laying 9 in. of concrete
on top of that.
Also in the second sequence, a dangerous
five-way intersection at the west end of the project was to
be reconfigured into a four-way intersection, allowing Desiard
Street to enter Louisville Avenue at a 90-degree angle. Powell
Avenue and Sterlington Road were to be redirected to merge
at only right turns at the intersection.
The Desiard Street project also includes
replacing the water and sewer lines in the road as a part
of a larger rehabilitation of the water distribution system
and sanitary sewer system in the surrounding area.
Merrick subcontracted the water and
sewer line work to JABAR Corp. of Calhoun, La., which was
to work ahead of the road construction and install new water
lines and meters on the side of the road, where they would
not be in the way of the road construction. JABAR also had
to replace the original clay sewer lines with more durable
polyethylene pipes.
But instead of working according to
DOTD's original plans, Merrick ended up working backward,
doing sequence two before completing sequence one.
John Eason, the DOTD project engineer
who drew up the original plans for the Desiard Street project,
said that the switch of the sequences was necessary because
of a BellSouth fiber-optic line that was not relocated before
the project began and couldn't be moved until a work order
was issued.
That one line significantly delayed
construction.
"This is an urban project,"
Eason said. "And as with all urban projects, when you
scratch the ground, everything in the world is under there."
There were also several other fiber-optic lines that had to
be avoided and 10 fuel tanks that had to be relocated away
from the path of the new water lines.
"There is really not a lot of right-of-way
to this job," Merrick said. "There have been real
tight parameters."
With the approval of DOTD district construction
supervisor Marshall Hill, Merrick Construction was allowed
to jump ahead to other steps of the project. Hill also took
over for Eason as project engineer for several months and
later reassigned Eason back to the project.
The new sequence allowed Merrick Construction
to do the toughest part of the job first: tearing out and
reconstructing the road west of University Avenue. And the
company was able to work through the winter months because
the weather permited the pouring of concrete. The sequence
also allowed them to avoid higher traffic volumes while finishing
the job.
"In the summer months, we are working
sequence one from University Avenue to the end of the job
because it will go a lot smoother," Merrick said. "The
University of Louisiana at Monroe is out of school for the
summer, and there is less traffic on that section."
While the construction did create a
bottleneck, the traffic flow was never stopped, said Ted Moulard,
a project manager for Merrick.
"We kept two lanes of traffic open
all of the way," he added.
Now, Desiard has five lanes of traffic
open from the new four-way intersection to the intersection
with University Avenue. All of the asphalt has been laid,
but Merrick Construction still needs to apply the wearing
course. Then the job will be left to JABAR to re-head the
manholes and bring the project to its completion.
|
