A four-lane connection got a step closer to reality Tuesday for Ashley County in south Arkansas.
The Arkansas Department of Transportation awarded contracts totaling $71.3 million to two Louisiana companies to widen a 15.3-mile section of U.S. 82/U.S. 425 from Hamburg, the county seat, to just across the Louisiana border, according to bid results posted on the agency's website Tuesday afternoon.
One contract was awarded to JB James Construction LLC of Baton Rouge to widen a 5.3-mile section of U.S. 82 south from Hamburg to U.S. 425.
A second contract was awarded to Diamond B Construction LLC of Alexandria, La., to widen a 10-mile section of U.S. 425 from U.S. 82 to the Louisiana border for $44.6 million.
The department considered but rejected a $72.1 million bid by JB James to widen the entire section.
After reviewing the bids, dividing the widening work between two contractors was the way to go, said Kevin Thornton, the department's assistant chief engineer for planning.
"The combined amounts on the two separate ones was less than what was bid on the combined job and it was a shorter amount of time," he said.
The agency sometimes uses what it calls a "combo" bid process in which it offers the two projects separately and as a single project in the same bid-letting.
"It's not all that often," Thornton said. "It usually happens when we have two projects close by or, in this case, touching each other where they're ready at the same.
"So then we've been developing two sets of plans so we say, 'Let's do a combo -- advertise separately and then put it together in a different contract -- and let the contractors tell us which is the best way to go."
Thornton said which bid package is more efficient in terms of cost and impact on the motorists depends on the circumstances.
"I've seen it go both ways," he said. "If there's enough scale of economy with the bigger job, it goes that way. But sometimes it goes this way."
Under the terms of the bid submitted, it would cost about $800,000 more than splitting the project into two jobs and take more than 26 months to complete.
By having two contractors work on the widening projects at the same time, the work is expected to be completed in about 24 months.
When completed, it will provide Hamburg and Ashley County's other major city, Crossett, a four-lane connection to Interstate 20 at Monroe, La. Monroe is 58 miles from Hamburg.
Crossett, which is about the same distance from Monroe, is home to one of the county's largest employers, a Georgia-Pacific paper mill. About 850 trucks go in and out of the plant daily, according to a county economic development official.
The work also includes widening a little more than a half mile of U.S. 425 in Louisiana. The highway in Louisiana approaches Arkansas as a four-lane but narrows to a two-lane to connect to U.S. 425 in Arkansas. Louisiana has agreed to pay for the estimated $2.5 million cost to widen the section south of the border.
The projects are part of the department's Connecting Arkansas Program, a $1.8 billion initiative to build regionally significant projects. The program is financed, in part, by a 1 percent statewide sales tax voters approved in 2012.
The projects also were identified in a 2009 department initiative establishing a grid system of four-lane roads across the state connecting significant population centers. The aim of the grid system is to promote safety, mobility and economic development.
"It's wonderful," Hamburg Mayor Dane Weindorf said Tuesday. "We're all excited. They think we're getting an interstate. They don't know it's a four-lane, but it's big for us. It's humongous."
The contract awards came almost one week after the department opened bids on the Ashley County work and nearly a dozen other projects worth $214 million. A department committee spent parts of Monday and Tuesday reviewing the bids for accuracy before they could be formally awarded, said Danny Straessle, a highway department spokesman.
Metro on 09/19/2018