About nine months into it, work on the North State Street reconstruction project is moving along as scheduled, with crews about to wrap up on the first section of the project.
Crews had replaced water and sewer pipes under the northbound lanes from Northside Drive to Sheppard Road and were reconstructing the roadway.
Once that’s finished, those lanes will be reopened to traffic, and the southbound lanes from Northside to Sheppard will be shut down, Jackson Engineering Manager Charles Williams said.
“Hopefully, that will be completed in the next 60 days,” he said.
Williams said the project has had a couple of delays as a result of traffic and weather, but contractors will be able to pick up steam in the summer.
The $19.6 million project is scheduled to be completed by 2020.
Work includes rebuilding the roadway and replacing the water and sewer infrastructure underneath it from Sheppard Road in the north to Hartfield Drive in the south.
The project calls for reducing the street from four to two lanes from Hartfield to Choctaw Road, and to two lanes and a turn lane from Choctaw to Sheppard.
A 10-foot multi-use path will be added along the southbound lane from Hartfield to Northside, and along the northbound lane from Northside to Sheppard.
Work is being done in the existing right-of-way, and most of it has been conducted under traffic. However, at Northside Drive, the street was completely blocked off to give contractors more maneuverability to work, Williams said.
The project is being funded with a portion of $19.5 million in federal TIGER grant funds. The city received the grant from the Federal Highway Administration in 2015.
Hemphill Construction is the contractor.
