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Huntsville Times
It's been more than two years since the main lanes of Memorial Parkway from south of Weatherly Road to north of Whitesburg Drive were closed and motorists shuffled to the new access roads.
The Alabama Department of Transportation took a major step to remedying that situation Friday when it opened bids to build an overpass on the Parkway that will stretch from north of Whitesburg to south of Weatherly.
Reed Contracting Services Inc. of Huntsville submitted the apparent low bid of four that the DOT received. Reed's bid of more than $16.2 million was about $1.3 million less than the next lowest bid submitted by Racon Inc. of Tuscaloosa.
Work on the overpass probably won't start until early next year or perhaps as late as the spring.
The DOT will review Reed's bid to determine if it meets specifications. If it does, the state will prepare a contract for both parties to sign. Once that's done, the state will issue an order to proceed and Reed will begin work.
Many times that process takes three to four months.
The company that wins the contract will have 340 working days to finish the project once it receives an order to proceed.
Johnny Harris, the DOT Division 1 engineer, said 340 working days could be about two years on the calendar. That would put completion of the overpass at early or mid-2010.
Harris said that once weekends, holidays and bad weather days are excluded, there are between 150 and 180 working days in a calendar year. A working day is counted if the contractor works more than six hours that day.
The 1.8-mile-long project involves building a long, elevated overpass from south of Weatherly to north of Whitesburg, drainage improvements and installing lights.
The total cost of the service roads and overpass will be nearly $28 million. APAC-Alabama Inc. was awarded an $11.65 million contract in fall 2003 to build the service roads, which opened in April 2006.
The pending construction on the Parkway overpass on the south end of town leads to the question of when the Parkway overpass for Max Luther and Sparkman drives will be built.
Harris said construction on that project is scheduled to begin in fiscal 2009, which will start Oct. 1, 2008. Harris said he hopes the project will begin early in fiscal 2009.
"We'll have to look at the available funding and look at all the projects in the state competing for funding," Harris said.
The overpass will be a long, elevated span through the Max Luther and Sparkman intersections.
The main lanes of the Parkway were closed and traffic shifted to the service roads in that area more than two years ago.
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