Center Junction interchange project delayed after high bids

State highway officials have decided to revise construction staging and rebid the diverging diamond interchange project at Interstate 55’s center junction.

Rebidding the project will delay construction until next spring at the earliest, Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) official Jason Williams said.

Williams said bids received in May were “substantially more” than the engineer’s estimate.

The Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission rejected the bids earlier this month.

The agency received four bids, ranging from a low of $18.4 million to a high of $20.1 million, Williams said.

Last year, highway officials estimated the project could cost some $10 million.

Williams, construction and materials engineer for MoDOT’s Southeast Missouri district, said contractors told the agency the high bids were tied to the highway department’s plan to keep traffic flowing during construction.

“The original plan did include keeping everything open,” he said.

Bidders cited the “complexity of construction staging” for the high prices, Williams said.

Staging refers to the sequencing of work to build the project and to deal with the traffic during construction.

As a result, MoDOT plans to look at “different options” that could involve traffic changes during construction, including closing some lanes, he said.

MoDOT will work with the federally funded Southeast Metropolitan Planning Organization or SEMPO to determine the “impact” various staging options would have on local traffic, Williams said.

SEMPO, whose members come from the local governments, is involved in transportation planning for the Cape Girardeau/Jackson urbanized area. The region includes portions of Girardeau and Scott counties, as well as portions of East Cape Girardeau and Alexander County in Illinois.

While construction staging plans will be reworked, state highway engineers have no plans to look at “other design options” for the interchange itself, Williams said.

The project still calls for constructing a diverging diamond interchange, which would shift traffic patterns to eliminate left-hand turns.

The new interchange would allow for replacement of two 600-foot-long Interstate bridges over U.S. 61 between Cape Girardeau and Jackson with two, 200-foot spans, highway officials said.

Williams told the Southeast Missourian last year that eliminating a grassy median and constructing a concrete barrier between the eastbound and westbound lanes on U.S. 61 would allow for the shorter spans to be built over it.

The diverging-diamond design would allow for better traffic flow onto the I-55 ramps, Williams said last year.

Once construction staging plans have been revised, MoDOT intends to rebid the project this fall. A contract could be awarded in December, with the contractor given a notice to proceed in February. Such a timeline would allow for construction to start next spring with completion by August 2021, Williams said.

MoDOT initially had planned for construction to start this summer and be completed by fall 2020.

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