ILLINOIS READY TO LET BIDS FOR SEVERAL ROAD AND BRIDGE PROJECTS IN REGION

SPRINGFIELD -- Bids totaling more than $86.4 million for highway and bridge improvement projects throughout Illinois are expected to let this month.

"We have received bids on a total of 136 projects, including three abandoned mined lands reclamation projects and nine airport projects," said John J. Burke, of the Illinois Department of Transportation Public Affairs Office. "Some of the bids have been let, and we're in the process of letting others."

Burke said it usually took about three weeks to let all the bids.

"Unless some bid is outrageous, we expect to see it let," he added.

Two of the new road projects are in Union County improvements to U.S. Route 51 north of Anna and a new bridge structure located in the Union County Wildlife Refuge, two miles south of Ware.

Another bridge project is located in Pulaski County.

The Highway 51 improvements will including patching from Illinois Route 146 to the Union/Jackson county line. Kinney Contractors, Inc., of Raymond, submitted the low bid of $185,501.

George E. Jones Excavating of Marion submitted the low bid for removing the old structure and installing a new concrete deck structure over Running Lake Ditch in Union County Wildlife Refuge. Also included in the wildlife refuge projects is .26 mile of new flexible pavement.

A new bridge structure will be replaced over Post Creek Cutoff, about a half-mile east of Karnak, Ill., on Route 169 in Pulaski County. The existing structure will be removed and replaced with a new reinforced concrete bridge over new pile-bent piers and abutments. E. T. Simonds Construction Co., of Carbondale, was low bidder at 747,922.

Simonds was also low bidder on a bridge project about 3.3 miles west of Sesser, Ill. in Franklin and Perry counties. The bridge, located on Route 154, over Little Muddy River, will consist of removing the existing structure and replacing it with a concrete slab bridge. Simonds' bid was $566,000.

Work is scheduled on Interstate 57, south of Marion, Ill. Almost a mile of reconstruction work on existing ramps will accommodate weigh-in motion equipment at the I-57 truck weigh stations.