The Arkansas Department of Transportation made no decision Monday on whether it will award a contract for a project to widen a section of U.S. 425/U.S. 82 in Ashley County.
The proposed widening project would provide a four-lane connection to Interstate 20 in Louisiana, which is the closest interstate to Ashley County. The distance from Hamburg to Monroe, La., is 58 miles.
An agency committee met Monday to review the low bids, worth $214 million, on nearly two dozen projects opened last week, but it was behind schedule, said Danny Straessle, the department spokesman. A decision likely will come today, he said.
The project would widen to four lanes from two a 15.3-mile section from Hamburg, the Ashley County seat, to just beyond the Louisiana border connecting to U.S. 425 in Louisiana, which already has four lanes.
The route also would serve the Ashley County town of Crossett, which is home to a Georgia-Pacific paper mill, a major employer in the county.
The department looked at two ways of building the route to help determine the most efficient way to widen the highway. One was to seek bids on widening the 15.3-mile section with one contractor. The other way was to have one contractor widen a 5.3-mile section, from Hamburg to U.S. 82, and another to widen the 10-mile section from U.S. 82 to the Louisiana border.
One company said it could do the work for $72.1 million. Separate companies said they could do the work for a total of $71.3 million, or about $800,000 less than bidding the project on a single contract.
Metro on 09/18/2018