Is using a center turn lane to merge with traffic illegal? It isn’t, but that’s not what they’re there for, city officials say.

Be prepared for another major batch of repaving.

Crews from Topeka will be tearing up a 1.2-mile hunk of 23rd Street, dragging away more than 40,000 square yards of pavement and replacing it all with more than 5,000 tons of fresh asphaltic concrete.

Bettis Asphalt & Construction submitted the low bid for handling the latest large paving job set for a busy Lawrence street: 23rd, from Ousdahl Road to Barker Avenue.

Lawrence city commissioners will be expected to approve hiring the company Tuesday night.

The $556,399 project is expected to begin in mid-September and be finished by mid-November — perhaps earlier, depending on weather conditions and other factors.

“They’ll want to get on it and off it as quickly as possible,” said Chuck Soules, the city’s director of public works.

The job might even take as little as two weeks, to be squeezed in between two Kansas University home football games: Sept. 26 against Southern Mississippi and Oct. 10 against Iowa State, said Dave Cronin, a project engineer for the city.

“We’re trying to shoot for that window,” Cronin said. “A lot of it’s weather-dependent, but if we have a good stretch of weather they can get it done in a couple of weeks.”

Whatever the duration, drivers can look forward to intermittent lane closures, a rough driving surface, abrupt pavement edges and other complications during construction. There’s talk of laying down the new road surface at night, to take advantage of reduced traffic, but the schedule remains undetermined.

Once complete, drivers and pedestrians may notice some of the differences coming to the stretch of 23rd:

• Fresh pavement will make for a smoother ride. Crews will start by removing the top 2 inches of pavement, then repairing any damage to the base below before topping the expose base off with new pavement and adjusting sewer lids and water-valve boxes to match.

• New lane markings will brighten visibility and aim to reduce confusion. Cronin promises a “smoother transition” for drivers heading east past the new O’Reilly Auto Parts store that is east of Checkers, between Ohio and Tennessee streets. The left-turn lane for traffic headed west will remain, but the lanes for traffic going east will no longer have abrupt, angular markings.

• The crosswalk for pedestrians along the east side of Louisiana Street will be straightened, a move that will require a portion of an existing concrete median to be removed. The crosswalk will connect the street corners occupied by Checkers and Walgreens stores.

• Traffic signals at Ousdahl and Alabama, and Louisiana and Massachusetts streets will be equipped with video systems for detecting vehicles. The systems will sense when vehicles are waiting to pass through each intersection, then trigger signal changes if so programmed. The systems will extend a growing network of such video-equipped signals on Sixth, Iowa and elsewhere along 23rd streets, and could lead to better coordination of future game-day traffic and other incidents — planned and unplanned — that can cause congestion. Naismith Drive also is getting a video hookup, as part of a recent repaving project.

Project costs will be borne by the city, offset by a $200,000 grant from the Kansas Department of Transportation. The state gives the city money each year to help maintain links in the state highway system, in this case a portion of Kansas Highway 10.

The city received four bids for the work, with Topeka-based Bettis’ being the least expensive. Bettis previously has handled other jobs in Lawrence, including paving along a section of George Williams Way and also some work for Kansas University.

LRM Industries Inc. of Lawrence, just missed making the low bid. Its $557,651 offer came in $1,252 higher than the one from Bettis. Sunflower Paving Inc. was third, at $560,273, while Hamm Inc. offered to do the work for $675,068.

The city had estimated that the project would cost $576,858 for construction.