Naismith repaving work to include video connections
Low Contract rates save city money on repairs
City officials say they’re saving money on road-repair projects, mostly because contractors are competing aggressively — translation: They’re lowering their prices to secure the work.
Now, officials are making plans to invest at least some of the city’s savings in a new program designed to rehabilitate concrete streets.
Specifically, three sections of road are envisioned for such repairs later this year, said Mark Thiel, assistant director of public works:
• Barker Avenue, from 15th to 16th streets.
• Bluffs Drive, from McDonald Drive to Sixth Street.
• Inverness Drive, from Bob Billings to Clinton parkways.
“We’ve been able to make the dollars go farther this year,” Thiel said.
One of the busiest streets in Lawrence during some of the most heated nights of winter soon could get some help cooling drivers’ frustrations.
But the benefits won’t be limited to fans arriving for and departing from Jayhawk basketball games at Allen Fieldhouse.
This summer, a repaving project along Naismith Drive will include installation of special video traffic sensors at the road’s intersections with 19th and 23rd streets.
The payoff: Drivers using the intersections will be detected by special cameras, instead of in-road wires — permitting automatic adjustments to better reflect traffic conditions, up to the second.
The shift will be expected to result in improved traffic flow.
The city already is making plans to connect video-monitored signals at intersections along Sixth Street, from Massachusetts to Iowa streets; and along Iowa, from Sixth to 23rd streets.
Images and data then would be fed through fiber-optic cables into a monitoring center where traffic could be managed to minimize problems caused by accidents, traffic jams or even legions of happy KU fans departing the fieldhouse following yet another Kansas University victory.
Step one: Equipping the signals with proper video equipment, which already improves service even if left disconnected from a centralized system.
“It’s more responsive, and eventually — at some point in the future, when we have the ability to hook it all together with other signals — the intersections can be timed so that there’s less waiting,” said Mark Thiel, assistant public works director for the city of Lawrence. “Eventually, our goal is to connect all of our intersections to video detection.”
But first things first.
The new video equipment along Naismith is part of a repaving project included in a list of resurfacing work up for approval by Lawrence city commissioners Tuesday night.
R.D. Johnson, a Lawrence-based paving contractor, has submitted the low bid for the entire job, offering to handle the work for $1.09 million.
On the list for repaving:
• Naismith, from 18th to 20th streets (both sides of the street), and from 20th to 23rd streets (the two lanes for traffic headed south). The sections of Naismith also will receive signs encouraging drivers and cyclists to “Share the Road,” a program designed to improve safety for cyclists.
• Alabama Street, from 19th to 21st streets, along the west side of Lawrence High School.
• 21st Street, from Mitchell to Louisiana streets, a stretch that includes a portion that runs along the southern edge of the high school.
• 24th Street, east of Alabama.
• 27th Street, from Redbud Lane to Louisiana.
Provided that commissioners approve the contract as expected Tuesday night, R.D. Johnson would be expected to start the repaving work Wednesday morning, Thiel said. The deadline for completion of work along Naismith would be Aug. 14; the other work would be set for completion by Sept. 21.