End of a detour: Big Bend Road project to be done by end of year, Cape officials say

Dan Johnston has come to hate the sight of big barricades and detour signs.

For nearly a year, they've come and gone along different spots along Big Bend Road, roadblocks that send drivers fuming in search of alternate routes.

It's been frustrating, Johnston said, because Big Bend is the street he uses -- or used to use -- to get from his home on nearby Spanish Street to get to ... well, almost everywhere.

"You forget the barricades are there, you come up to them and then you have to backtrack," Johnson said. "It's a waste of time, and it's a waste of gas. It's become quite a pain."

City officials concede the $1.9 million project to widen Big Bend Road from Second Street to just north of East Cape Rock Drive hasn't exactly gone according to plan. The project started last October and was slated to be completed in 300 days, originally setting a completion date for sometime in August.

But the rising Mississippi River this summer and a change in scope and design has caused the project to be delayed. Now city planners and the company doing the work say they hope to have the roadwork done by the end of the year.

"People are frustrated, and I don't blame them one bit," said Kelly Green, the former city engineer who was recently promoted to director of development services. "It's a major inconvenience for people to drive all the way around to get to the Red Star residential area."

The problems have come in spurts. Originally, the project called for widening and doing an overlay, which means adding new surface over old. But once work trucks started driving on the road, Green said, the existing pavement began to crumble under the weight of the trucks. That suggested the pavement was older and much thinner -- and thus, more fragile -- than a consultants report initially showed, she said.

That prompted the project to have to be redesigned and called for removing the pavement that was there to replace all the roadway.

"Things like that certainly didn't help with the schedule," she said. "These types of projects are much more difficult than people probably realize."

Then came the rains this spring, which added to the project's problems. A 100-foot section near the Sloan Creek bridge began to sink. The rising waters of the Mississippi River crept up the creek and under the new pavement, eating away the soil. That caused an embankment failure and left narrow gaps in the roadway.

That kept the barricades at the project's southernmost end in place from near Sloan Creek as work crews waited for the water to recede. Green said work on that is expected to start in earnest today and she hopes that part of the project will be done in three weeks. When that's completed, it will open up Olive Street so drivers will have a southern exit from that part of town.

The work is being done by Nip Kelley Equipment, where Nathan Rees is the project manager. While the water has been down for weeks, he said, the ground was saturated and they were unable to get their equipment onto the ground until it dried out.

"The water was up for so long in that area that the ground became so soft it wouldn't hold the weight of our machines," Rees said. "It seems to be ready now, so we're just keeping our fingers crossed."

Workers will be shoring up the bank and hauling in crushed stone to replace the earthen embankment and areas along the bridge, he said, to guard against failures. That has added $50,000 to the cost of the project.

But an end is in sight. The project has been completed from just north of Sloan Creek to just to the south of Roberts Street. The work is generally being done in one- to two-block sections, Rees said.

Another section -- from Johnson Street to just north of Sylvan Lane -- is set for completion in the next three weeks, Rees said, at about the same time the Sloan Creek bridge restoration project is completed. That will open up another street, Sylvan Lane, for drivers.

The road closures aren't over, however. Two more streets will be closed between now and the project's year-end completion. Bertling Street will have to close for a time within the next six weeks, Rees said, though he wasn't sure for how long.

East Cape Rock Drive will also have to be closed at some point, but Rees said they intend to try to keep at least one of those roads open at all times.

"We haven't really worked through a time frame on what will close when," he said. "We still have to talk to the city and figure that out. We don't want to land-lock these people."

Green said the project won't likely officially be completed until next year, but that will only be to add a sidewalk on the north side of Bertling Street. But if weather permits, work will continue into the winter.

Dan Johnston, who lives near Big Bend Road, said he would be glad when the project was finished.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "Very glad."

smoyers@semissourian.com

388-3642