Friday, May 3rd, 2019 From Mayor Kalkomey
Here is a brief summary of what we should expect to see on IH10 in the next 12-18 months.
1.
The frontage roads will convert to one-way next week between the river
and Koy Road. We will have to exit where we normally do westbound and
U-turn at Mlcak. They will
reduce the frontage roads to one lane
while constructing 2 new lanes. Then they will switch traffic to new
frontage road lanes and rebuilt the remaining lane. Then they will place
a concrete barrier between the two
outer frontage road lanes and divert all IH10 to the inner two frontage
road lanes. This will allow them to fully rebuild the main lanes. It
probably takes a year to rebuild the frontage roads before they start to
divert the main lanes.
2. The FM 1458 (San Felipe exit) overpass and
Mlcak Road overpass will be removed and rebuilt. They think FM1458 will
be first, which may give them time to build some of the Chew Road
interchange to give us some relief westbound. If not, then our U-turn
will be FM1458 instead of Mlcak.
3. They will do the westbound river
bridge first. Materials for new bridge scheduled for August. So
westbound traffic will be diverted to the eastbound bridge. They say the
bridge can accommodate 4 lanes of traffic. I suspect it will be tight.
Schedule has to coordinated with the work on the Waller County side, so
schedule may change.
4. We discussed the issues with all of the
accidents on the Waller County side of the river and how those are
impacted by the construction methods. This TxDOT office is well aware of
the situation, and will make all practical efforts to not duplicate
those conditions.
5. This contractor was not the low bidder. The same
one on the Waller side was low. But the second low bidder bid a shorter
time. So TxDOT chose the shorter schedule. But that schedule is still 3
1/2 years, with incentives to reduce that to 3 years. So even with that
we are still looking at early 2022 for completion.
6. Be patient.