A pair of long-awaited road improvement projects should break ground later this year.
Morgan County Highway Engineer Matt Coultas gave an update to the Board of Commissioners during their regular meeting Monday morning.
Coultas says one of the projects is an undertaking he has wanted to do since he became the county’s engineer, which is giving a facelift to the Concord-Arenzville Road. The seven-and-a-half-mile stretch of highway has long had a reputation of being one of the most dangerous stretches of road in Morgan County.
In all, Coultas updated the board on three project areas that will be coming up in the near future. “One was the MFT (Motor Fuel Tax) letting which we will do that locally and that’s our annual oil and chip and other types of deicer materials, culvert materials, that sort of thing. Letting will be on March 30th as long as we get everything approved through IDOT prior to that.
Then we have the Concord-Arezville Road improvement project that is scheduled to be on the state letting in April. So next month we’ll have that let and hopefully get some good numbers and get a good contractor and the get that project started as soon as we can.”
Coultas anticipates the Concord-Arenzville Road project will cost roughly $4 million to complete. In December Coultas informed the board that the last round of Rebuild Illinois funding coming to the county, along with some federal highway safety monies would be used to complete the project.
Another stretch of road long-awaited for repairs is the Murrayville Road project, which Coultas says will have to wait just a bit longer before work can begin there.
“We have the other highway project, the road that runs through Murrayville between 267 and 67 and we were hoping or anticipating an April let, as well as the Concord-Arenzville Road project being on the same state letting however, we didn’t meet a deadline with one of the submittals so that will be pushed off to the June letting is what I’ve been told here just recently.”
Coultas told the board that it is too soon to know for sure, but there is a chance that the Murrayville Road project could push into being split between part of this year’s construction season, and the 2023 spring season due to the later letting period.