The city of Jacksonville and the Village of South Jacksonville are teaming with a local engineering firm for a proposed road project on East Michigan Avenue.
At last night’s city council meeting, Jacksonville aldermen approved a preliminary construction services agreement with Hutchison Engineering for funds for the project.
Hutchison Engineering’s Jim Burke explains what’s currently within the proposal for the project, and what parts of the local road they’ll be working on.
“The proposed project for East Michigan includes hot mix asphalt, we’ll mill the existing surface off and put a new hot mix surface down along East Michigan from Dairy Queen at South Main easterly to Hardin Avenue. The Hardin Avenue intersection will also be reconstructed with new concrete and opened up a little bit so that trucks can make easier movements getting in and out of Reynolds,” Burke explains.
Since Michigan Avenue is the dividing line between Jacksonville and South Jacksonville, the project is to use funds from both municipalities. Burke discusses where those funds will come from and a tentative timeline for the proposed project.
“The corporate limit line for the Village and the City runs down Michigan Avenue. This project will be a joint project between the Village and the City using federal aid funds that both communities have received, as well as motor fuel tax funds. The funding that we’ve received for the project is programmed for IDOT’s fiscal year 2019, which starts after July 1. We would anticipate that the project would start at the beginning to middle of August and run about 60 days probably, so we would be looking at the end of October for when we’d be wrapping up this project,” says Burke.
While the proposed project is still several months away, there have been talks of possibly installing another four-way stop along East Michigan. Burke explains where that proposed stop sign might go.
“Currently the intersection of Michigan and Hardin Avenue is an uncontrolled stop intersection for Hardin Avenue traffic, East Michigan traffic has to stop at Hardin. There has been some concerns about pedestrians in speed vehicles and site distance at this intersection. One of the things that we’ll be investigating will be the necessity for potentially a four-way stop at that location. That will largely depend upon accident analysis, the number of pedestrians, cyclists that use the roadway, average speed and a number of other factors,” Burke explains.
Burke also says that the total cost of the project has not yet been confirmed due to the project still being in its preliminary phases right now.