NORRISTOWN >> Just over a year after construction
crews broke ground on the first phase of the Lafayette Street extension
project, the Montgomery County commissioners awarded a contract for the second
phase of the project at their meeting on Wednesday.
The $12.8 million dollar contract was awarded to J.D.
Eckman, Inc. of Atlgen, Pa. J.D. Eckman, Inc. is not the same company that
worked on the first phase of the project. Construction on the second phase of
the multi-million dollar project is slated to begin in the first quarter of
2015.
“It’s very typical for a transportation project of this
size to be phased,” commissioners’ vice-Chairwoman Leslie Richards said. “It’s
just easier. You don’t want to give the construction management of the entire
project to one firm. It’s just kind of checks and balances.”
The bidding process for the project is not done by the
county, but is done by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT)
and it is incumbent upon the county to award the contract to the bidder PennDOT
suggests. Eighty percent of the funding for the entire project comes from the
federal government and 20 percent comes from the county.
Phase two of the project will extend Lafayette Street to
Diamond Avenue in Plymouth Township. Phase two will also reconstruct and widen
Diamond Avenue from the Pennsylvania Turnpike Bridge to the Norristown border
at Ross Street.
The first phase of the road construction involves
extending Lafayette Street from Ford Street in Norristown to Conshohocken Road.
Aside from paving the roadway, crews need to put up 12-foot sound walls along a
stretch of the extension to stop noise made by cars from bothering residents
who live on Ridge Pike. Crews will also begin creating a landscaped median. The
first phase of the project, which started in August 2013, is expected to be
completed by December.
Phase three will reconstruct Lafayette Street from
Barbadoes Street to Ford Street. This will include widening east of DeKalb
Street, new traffic signals, sidewalks and streetscape. The contract for the
third phase has not gone out to bid yet, though an online brochure detailing
the project states the construction on the third phase will begin in 2016.
The goal of the project is to decongest traffic in
Norristown, but to also create easy access to Norristown from the Turnpike, so
travelers can make use of the arts centers and patronize businesses in the
area. The extension project will also open up the Schuylkill River to
Norristown and its residents, which Commissioner Bruce L. Castor Jr. says will
revitalize the area.
“Along the river from Manayunk all the way out to
Royersford, Conshohocken, West Conshohocken, we see what developing the
waterfront and improving the traffic flow does for a community,” Castor said at
the meeting. “The significance of the Lafayette Street project is designed to
bring them together in a fashion such that people will come to Norristown and
patronize the businesses, utilize the arts, take advantage all of the
amenities. “All of those things don’t happen unless the traffic flow from the
Turnpike is able to get in here,” Castor said.
“This project, I think more than any other project we’re
working on now is going to be transformational for the county, for the region,
for Norristown,” Richards said.
Richards explained once completed it will cut down
traffic and provide a lot of relief for anyone getting in and out of the area.
“It’s needed and people are really excited we’re doing
it,” Richards said.
In July, the commissioners’ visited the site where the
first phase of the project was being put together along with Leo Bagely, a
transportation planner at the county’s planning commission, and all said the
project was on time.
“What this is going to look like, with the landscaping
we’re doing, is we’re going to change the look of how people come out of
Norristown,” Bagely said during the tour in July.
Source: Times
Herald
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