Low bids opened on 35 projects

Cost of road work to top $44 million

The Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department opened low bids Wednesday on 35 projects worth $44.2 million, including a $12.8 million project to rebuild a 5-mile section of Arkansas 4 outside the Desha County community of Arkansas City.

The Desha County project includes rebuilding a section of Arkansas 4S, which is a state highway spur in the Arkansas City city limit. The project extends west from the city to a bridge near the Arkansas River Road.

R. Thompson Inc. of Hamburg was the low bidder. The project received one other bid for $13.4 million from Kiewit Infrastructure South of Fort Worth.

All low bids opened Wednesday will be reviewed for accuracy before they become final.

One other project on which bids were opened Wednesday exceeded $10 million. It was a project to widen a 1.43-mile section of Arkansas 7 in Garland County. The section between Arkansas 290 and the Ouachita River bridge will be widened to five lanes from two lanes.

Kiewit Infrastructure South's wasn't the lowest in terms of cost to construct -- $10.7 million. But it bid the lowest number of days -- 240 -- to complete the project. Manhattan Road & Bridge Co. of Tulsa had the lowest bid at $9.8 million, but it said it would need 456 days to do the work.

No other project exceeded $2 million. Of the 35 projects, 17 were on state routes. Their low bids totaled $38.5 million. Another 17 were on city streets and totaled $5.3 million. One county road project totaled about $350,000.

Metro on 04/13/2017

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