Work on East 25th Street will begin next week.
Milling will begin on Monday, July 10 in preparation of the $2.235 million overlay of East 25th Street, from the Columbus city limits at Talley Road to State Road 9. The overlay work will be done by Milestone Contractors, Inc.
A $1 million Community Crossings matching grant administered by the Indiana Department of Transportation has been awarded to Bartholomew County government. But there are 15 other overlay projects that, with East 25th Street included, cover 16.5 miles with a cost estimated at about $110,000 a mile, Bartholomew County Engineer Danny Hollander said in May.
At this time, county officials don’t anticipate that both lanes will be closed at the same time. But Bartholomew County Highway Superintendent Dwight Smith advises motorists to be prepared for multiple flaggers directing all traffic onto a single lane in work areas.
Weather permitting, the milling, which refers to the process of removing existing blacktop to restore it to a uniform texture for repaving, should take about six days, Smith said. It should take an additional five days to put down the blacktop, the highway superintendent said.
Finally, crews will put down a rapid penetration emulsion (RPE) used to make asphalt more water resistant while maintaining texture. After the RPE dries for about six hours, temporary striping can be put down and the berm at the side of both lanes can be rebuilt.
The Bartholomew County commissioners have asked Smith and Hollander to come up with additional repaving projects that can be completed without financial assistance from state or federal governments.
But once the East 25th Street roadwork is complete, there is still a significant matter of a large-scale bridge project along the same stretch that will again slow down traffic.
Force Construction Co. has submitted the only bid for the renovation of the concrete bridge over Clifty Creek, east of the former Petersville landfill. Their proposal to do the work was $266,725. In contrast, the engineer’s estimate was about $170,000.
“That’s substantially over,” Hollander said. “We’re going to have to take a good look at that and see what they are going to do with it.”
Work on the bridge, which includes strengthening sections more than a century old, is intended to be a temporary fix to extend the life of the bridge by another 10 years, Hollander said. County officials are hopeful they will be able to obtain federal dollars before 2033 to replace the entire river crossing, he said.
Originally, it was hoped the bridge work and overlay could be done simultaneously, so motorists would not be inconvenienced in the same area twice in one year, the highway engineer said. But delays are increasing, making that goal look unlikely.
Inflation and labor shortages are receiving most of the blame for higher bids, Hollander said.
