Highway bids reach highest total ever

Low offers come to $230.5 million

— The Arkansas Highway Commission held its largest bid opening ever Wednesday, which served to underscore the increase in road construction in the state that will commence over the next few years.

Bids were opened on just 14 projects, but the apparent low bids came in at $230.5 million, well beyond the 10-year-old bid-opening record. On Feb. 20, 2002, the commission opened low bids totaling $182.7 million on 30 projects.

That bid opening came during the peak year of a five-year, $1 billion interstate repair program.

Wednesday’s bid opening came at the beginning of another interstate repair program, brought forward after voters approved a $575 million bond renewal in November 2011. Under the program, the state Highway and Transportation Department expects to work on 75 repair projects worth $1.2 billion on 455 miles of interstate roadway.

Given all that construction, in all likelihood future bid openings will top Wednesday’s amount. “I think there is a possibility this will be a short-lived record,” said Randy Ort, a department spokesman.

The first three interstate repair projects were tentatively awarded contracts Wednesday. The contracts won’t be final until the bids are reviewed for errors. The projects, the amounts awarded and the apparent low bidders were:

Construct new pavement on 7.1-mile section of Interstate 540 between Interstate 40 and Arkansas 22 in Crawford and Sebastian counties; $78.8 million; Kiewit Infrastructure South Co. of Little Rock.

Reconstruct 7.2 miles of roadway and replace four bridges on Interstate 40 from Mill Creek to Arkansas 331 south of Russellville in Pope County; $42.4 million; Blackstone Construction LLC of Russellville.

Mill and inlay 7.4 miles, rehabilitate two bridges and construct three more on Interstate 530 from Bingham Road to the Grant County line in Pulaski and Saline counties; $13.5 million; Cranford Construction Co. of North Little Rock.

The commission also tentatively awarded a $39.2 million contract to Jensen Construction Co. of Des Moines, Iowa, to replace the U.S. 63 bridge over the Black River near Black Rock in Lawrence County. The department posted the bridge with lower weight limits in February 2011, restricting truck traffic in that area of the state. The 63-year-old deck-truss bridge is 2,608 feet long and carries 10,000 vehicles daily. Its superstructure is rated structurally deficient, which required the department to lower the weight limits.

The bid opening came the same day the commission was briefed on the $1.8 billion road construction program voters approved earlier this month. The constitutional amendment that passed raises the state sales tax by 0.5 percentage point to 6.5 for 10 years beginning July 1.

Under the amendment, the Highway Department will receive 70 percent of the proceeds from the 0.5 percent tax, under a traditional split of money for state road construction, or about $160 million annually for the 10-year life of the tax. The cities and counties will split the remaining 30 percent, or about $35 million annually.

The amendment also created a permanent state-aid street fund, similar to the existing state-aid county fund, that cities can tap for street projects. One penny of the existing per-gallon motor fuels tax, worth about $20 million a year, will go to that fund.

The department’s portion of the money will go to regionally significant projects. They include devoting $300 million to improvements to a stretch of Interstate 30 between Interstate 40 on the north and Interstates 440 and 530 on the south. The improvements involve widening that section of I-30 to 10 lanes and either replacing or widening the I-30 bridge over the Arkansas River between Little Rock and North Little Rock.

The improvements also include widening I-30 from Sevier Street in Benton to U.S. 70 in Saline County and widening the rest of U.S. 70 between I-30 and Hot Springs, much of it in Garland County.

The department also would have money for widening U.S. 67/167 from Jacksonville to Cabot in Pulaski and Lonoke counties, and for completing the widening of Interstate 40 between Conway and Little Rock in Faulkner and Pulaski counties. Another project in the district is widening part of U.S. 270 west of Hot Springs, also in Garland County. Interstate 630 from Baptist Health Medical Center to South University Avenue also would be widened.

Other parts of the state also will benefit. Under the program, the widening of U.S. 167 between I-530 and the Louisiana line would be completed. Sections of U.S. 82, which traverses the southern part of the state east to west, also would be widened. U.S. 412 would be widened between Paragould and Walnut Ridge/Hoxie. Parts of Interstate 540 south from Bentonville also would be widened.

Both initiatives are on top of the department’s regular construction budget. Its statewide transportation improvement plan for 2013-2016 contains about 190 state road and bridge projects worth about $2.5 billion.

Highway Commission member John Ed Regenold of Armorel, elected chairman of the five-member commission on Wednesday, said the successful voter initiatives should be credited in no small way to his predecessor, R. Madison Murphy of El Dorado, whose 10-year term ends in January. Murphy played leadership roles on the Blue Ribbon Commission on Highway Finance, which recommended both initiatives, and on the Move Arkansas Forward Committee, which backed them.

“'I’m not sure we would’ve received the tremendous support for those programs without Chairman Murphy's vision and determination,” Regenold said.

Wednesday’s commission meeting wasn’t without discord, however, after Scott Bennett, the department director, outlined the next steps in the half-cent sales tax program. He said the department will hire a firm to manage the construction under the constitutional amendment in January, when the agency also will hire a financial adviser and bond counsel. Early next year, the department also will begin assigning projects to existing on-call design firms, as well as schedule the projects, he said. The first bonds could be issued and the first projects awarded contracts by the end of next year.

“Where do we fit in,” asked commission member Tom Schueck of Little Rock, who pressed for more commission input on when the projects would be scheduled.

But Bennett said the scheduling of the projects is driven by how fast they can be designed, with some projects having more hurdles than others, such as environmental clearances or right-of-way acquisition. He disagreed with Schueck’s suggestion that that meant urban projects in central Arkansas will take longer to build than other projects because they have more hurdles and noted that all will be built. “They are all priorities,” he said.

Still, Murphy asked that the agency staff at the next commission meeting in January provide a list of the projects ranked by readiness.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/29/2012

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