Motorists will be driving on a smoother, more level Main Street in North Little Rock by later this year under a planned project being moved up to avoid a conflict with the Broadway Bridge reconstruction in 2016.
Proposed legislation to go before the North Little Rock City Council on Monday will seek approval of a contract for engineering, design and construction phases to repave Main Street from the foot of the Main Street viaduct at 13th Street to North Little Rock High School at 22nd Street.
The engineering and design contract with Thomas Engineering Company Inc. of North Little Rock is for $134,950, including right-of -way acquisitions. The company was selected on the basis of annual Requests for Qualification proposals made by the city, according to the measure. Construction drawings are due to the city by June, with construction to begin in the summer, according to the proposal.
Mayor Joe Smith said last fall that he planned to resurface and level Main Street's four lanes during the summer of 2016. That timetable, though, would have at least partially overlapped with the closing and demolition of the Broadway Bridge over the Arkansas River, starting in May 2016, putting a projected 12,000 more vehicles daily onto Main Street.
"We had a little extra money in our street fund account," Smith said Wednesday about moving up the project. "With the Broadway Bridge to be shut down in 2016, I didn't think it would be good to have Main Street messed up by construction while the Broadway Bridge was closed."
The new Broadway Bridge is projected to reopen to traffic within six months. Main Street connects North Little Rock's downtown with Interstate 40 and John F. Kennedy Boulevard to the north. Interstate 30 runs parallel with Main Street and can be reached via side streets.
Funding for the engineering contract and the construction will come from the city's street fund, but the project wasn't included in the 2015 street fund budget of $5.89 million, city Finance Director Karen Scott said Wednesday.
The funding is possible through a "fund balance" of money carried forward from the 2014 budget, Scott said. The Jan. 1 fund balance was $2,399,089, she said. The improvements to Main Street are estimated at $690,000, according to the proposal.
Main Street has been repaved so often that the pavement rises toward the center, creating humps at some intersections. The outside lanes are at such an angle that large trucks have hit poles on the sides of the street, a city official has previously said.
"Because the road has been overlaid so many times, it's not a simple grind-it-off and put-down-asphalt type of job," Smith said. "It tepees in a lot of places, so there will be places where we'll probably need to get into the earth and bring it down to where it needs to be."
Metro on 03/05/2015