This year’s Logan County District 1 construction season starts early this New Year with the Seward Road Bridge replacement beginning this month. The contract has been let and construction is scheduled to begin on replacing the Seward Road / Cottonwood Creek Bridge January 23rd, 2017. The project was awarded at the December ODOT Commission meeting to Bridgeco Contractors for $1,025,065. Funding for this project is 80% Federal funds matched with 20% County Improvements for Roads and Bridges Fund (CIRB). In addition to all who live in the area and used that bridge on a daily basis, the county road crews are also looking forward to having this bridge re-opened.
Simpson Road asphalt overlay from Ward Road to Coltrane Road is a very important “Force Account” road project phase for our county during the last four months of 2016. The focus of our efforts was cutting, clearing, shaping, grading, and compressing the roadway ditch lines and shoulders. Those grade and drain changes were needed to meet the ODOT road standards for the needed federal funding grant application. The good news is that once we finished clearing the right of way, on schedule and in accordance with ODOT published county road standards, the Federal grant funding was approved and so construction will begin this summer.
We also have five miles of projects for Coltrane road and are still on track for getting two miles paved beginning the fall of 2017 along with the ACOG federal grant applications for all three phases of this project. Coltrane Road 3 phase project from (Phase 3: Waterloo North to Simmons), (Phase 2: Simmons to Simpson), (Phase 1: Simpson to Seward). All three phases were once again submitted to ACOG for federal grant applications on December 17, 2016. Those applications will be reviewed by the ACOG transportation board. To put a stop to the delay and cost increases the ODOT Local Government representative guaranteed our Board of Commissioners that at least Phase 2 would start this Summer/Fall with 100% CIRB funding. We also will have five additional grant applications this year for road safety improvements in our district.
Our “save-to-pave” program successfully added two additional miles of roadway last year on Charter Oak and Forest Hills and now we look to improve on that number next year as we get better at building roads and managing a budget to complete five new road projects; they are: 1) Bryant from Waterloo north to dead end will receive a 2” asphalt overlay; 2) Simmons from Bryant to Coltrane will receive a 2” asphalt overlay; 3) Broadway from SH-33 South to Industrial will receive a 3/8 chip seal* overlay; 4) Forest Hills between Bryant and Coltrane to be chip double sealed (5/8 + 3/8); and 5) Simpson Road to be double chip sealed (5/8 + 3/8) from Kelley to Broadway.
* Chipseal (Wiki) is a pavement surface treatment that combines one or more layer(s) of asphalt with one or more layer(s) of fine aggregate.
All total that may seem like an aggressive schedule of nine miles of new paved county roads for this year. I am very encouraged in our ability to deliver and see “value” in upgrading our current set of force account road building options. The majority of our County road crews are committed to providing the best value to our taxpayers for the service they receive. Opening up CIRB funds to our current force account capability would really help; but that’s a topic for another day.
Until next time, be safe out there on our county roads and bridges.
Marven Goodman
Commissioner
Logan County, District 1
Work: 405 282-3581
commissioner@commissiondistrict1.com