WESTFIELD – The Board of Public Works voted unanimously Tuesday to approve two change orders for engine4ering work being done in connection with road improvement projects at North Elm Street and the second in neighborhoods off Main Street.
The BPW voted 3-0 to approve a change order in the amount of $23,000 for the North Elm Street center turning lanes and drainage improvements being designed by Vanasse Hangen Brustlin (VHB) Inc.
The additional funding is to prepare documents for a truck exclusion on the lower section of Notre Dame Street which will be submitted to the state Department of Transportation (DOT) for its review and, hopefully, approval of the city’s request to prohibit commercial truck traffic in that neighborhood.
The city is also proposing to create a dedicated truck route from North Elm Street to Union Street that will require commercial traffic to go south, across the bridge to Elm Street and make a U-turn in front of Holy Trinity Church, then travel north to access Union Street, a proposal which will also need the DOT’s blessing.
Utility Engineer Heather Miller of the city’s Engineering Department presented those change orders to the BPW Tuesday night. Miller said that the $23,000 engineering change order includes a comprehensive traffic study at the North Middle and Southampton Road schools. The additional work is being funded with bond money.
“The intersection study at the North Middle School is being done to see if the traffic warrants the installation of a traffic light,” Miller said Friday. “The study will provide information on the overall traffic volume, the timing of that traffic volume and turning movements in and out of the two schools.
“It’s a sticky spot because of the curve in the roadway,” Miller said.
The board also approved a $36,000 change order for the Old Town Roadway Reconstruction of 2013 which is being performed by Tighe & Bond. That project was broken into two phases, one connected with construction of the proposed Ashley Street School and the other phase associated with construction of the senior center. Those phases have flipped in priority a couple of times due to the status changes of the associated school and senior center construction projects.
The city, for the past decade, has selected streets in the downtown to be part of the Old Town Roadway effort. The streets selected typically have poor pavement conditions which triggers the city to look at the infrastructure and see if they need to be upgraded. Key elements this effort addresses are pavement, sidewalks, curbing, drainage, sanitary sewer, and water mains. All of these are looked at and are replaced or refurbished as needed.
Miller said the change order is to make the project bid ready, with construction and bid documents prepared to allow the city to proceed with the actual construction, most likely of the phase associated with the senior center. Construction of the senior facility is expected to begin later this month
“The design is pretty much done,” Miller said. “The change order is to bring it to bid documents, to bring the (engineering) drawings up to construction documents.”
One phase of the work, associated with the elementary school, includes Cross, Ashley, State streets and Taylor Avenue. The other phase of the project encompasses George, Frederick, Noble, East Silver, Exchange, Cycle streets, Cleveland, Parkside, Lozier and Clinton avenues, Old Town Fordway and Lindbergh Boulevard.
Miller said the additional work includes assessments of both ends of Lindbergh Boulevard and Noble Street where those streets intersect of Main Street on the north and East Silver Street on the south.
