Revised West 9th Street project expected to happen this year

Weiser city officials are waiting for approval to send the scaled-down West 9th Street realignment and widening project out to bid again.
 City public works official Mike Campbell said the state agency that will administer the grant spending on the project is currently reviewing the changes to the plans.
 The Local Highway Technical Assistance Council (LHTAC) will administer the grant funding and oversee the project. LHTAC provides technical services to local road jurisdictions across the state.
 Mayor Randy Hibberd said he is confident the project will be done in 2020. After the review by LHTAC, the city and engineer will get the project ready to go out to bid for a second time.
 The city and the city’s engineer on the project, Keller Associates, were forced to cut costs on the project after bids came in higher than the estimate. Two bids were received and reviewed at the office of Keller Associates and both bids were rejected by the city last May. The lower of the two bids was nearly $800,000 more than the estimate.
 “The last time the bids were way over what anybody expected,” Campbell said.
 Officials blamed the higher bids on timing and the fact that contractors are busy all across the Treasure Valley, and especially Boise, with residential and commercial projects.
 With so much work, contractors have been able to pick and choose what they want to bid on.  
 The plan to do the construction last summer on the long-awaited West 9th Street project was put on hold. The city and Keller Associates hoped to go out to bid again last August, but that timeline didn’t work out. The street project has been in various stages of planning for nearly a decade.
 Campbell said the changes to the scope of work were significant enough that the entire project had to go through a redesign and another review process again by LHTAC.
 There is optimism that the revised street project will start this summer or fall. Although the scope of work was reduced to cut costs, city officials said the major parts of the project will stay intact. One of those is replacing the bridge over the Galloway canal. The bridge is currently one-lane and will be replaced with a new 40-foot-wide structure. No work on the bridge can be done until after the irrigation season ends in October and the canal is empty.
 The scope of work in the original plan included widening and realigning the stretch of West 9th Street from Pioneer Road to beyond Indianhead Road to Upper Road. To cut costs and bring the project within the $2.3 million budget, the amount of streetwork has been reduced by 600 feet on both sides of the canal.
 If the money was available, city officials wanted to do sidewalks, curbs and gutters on both sides of the street from Pioneer Road to beyond the canal to enhance safety for pedestrians and bicyclists.
 It now looks like that only the east side of the street will get sidewalks. The west side of West 9th Street is actually in the county.
 Some of the preliminary work on the street was done last summer in anticipation of the project starting in 2019. City crews installed new waterlines and upgraded electric and sewer systems along the street.
 Also part of the project, the city acquired rights-of-way along West 9th Street. There were basically small strips of property that were only a few feet wide but were needed for the wider street. The standard city street width is 12 feet for each lane for a minimum of 24 feet, if not more.
 The work on West 9th Street will be paid for by federal highway grants administered by the Idaho Department of Transportation through the LHTAC program. The city will be required to pay 7.34 percent of the project cost as matching funds.