This week's construction-related closures

This should have been posted Friday....

 

Interstate 10

Monday-Friday, March 3-7

9 p.m. until 5:30 a.m. nightly

Frontage roads, both directions, between Loop 1604 and Huebner Rd (northwest San Antonio)

Alternating lanes will close while crews lay pipe.

Monday-Friday, March 3-7

9:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. daily

Frontage roads, both directions, between Loop 1604 and Huebner Rd (northwest San Antonio)

Alternating lanes will close while crews lay pipe.

Sunday-Friday, March 2-7

9 p.m. until 5:30 a.m. nightly

Main lanes, each direction, between UTSA Blvd and Fredericksburg Rd (northwest San Antonio)

The left lanes will close in each direction while crews demolish the median barrier. Expect delays.

Interstate 35

Sunday-Friday, March 2-28

9 p.m. until 5:30 a.m. continuous

Southbound exit ramp to Olympia Pkwy and Forum Pkwy (Selma)

The southbound exit to Olympia and Forum parkways (exit 173) will close three weeks while crews install barriers and finish the construction of the ramp. Traffic will use exit 174 to FM 1518 and Evans Road to reach its destination.

Monday-Wednesday, March 3-5

8:30 a.m. until 3 p.m. daily

Northbound frontage road between Olympia Pkwy and Evans Rd (Selma)

Alternating lanes will close while paving crews lay asphalt. Expect delays.

Saturday, March 8

5 a.m. until noon

Northbound main lanes between Walzem and the westbound I-410 exit (northeast San Antonio)

The two right lanes will close while crews demolish portions of the Thousand Oaks bridge. This closure includes the exit to westbound I-410. Traffic will exit Weidner and turnaround. Expect delays.

Saturday, March 8

5 a.m. until 10 p.m.

Northbound frontage road between Crestwind Dr and Windcrest Dr (northeast San Antonio)

The left lane will close while crews set barrier. This closure includes an entrance ramp. Signs will be posted to mark the detour route. Expect delays.

Interstate 37

No closures scheduled.

Interstate 410

No closures scheduled.

Loop 1604

Friday-Sunday, February 28-March 9

9 a.m. until 4 p.m. daily

Main lanes, both directions, between Bandera Rd and Culebra Rd (northwest San Antonio)

Alternating lanes will close, including shoulders, for survey work.

U.S. Highway 90

No closures scheduled.

U.S. Highway 281

No closures scheduled.

Other roads

No closures scheduled.

All planned lane closures are pending weather.

Hausman Road meeting TONIGHT

An open house meeting is being held tonight at the Helotes City Hall to discuss plans for Hausman Road outside Loop 1604. That meeting will run from 5 p.m. until 7 p.m.

Hausman Road, from Loop 1604 to Bandera Road, is labeled FM 1560 on the state highways register. Between Loop 1604 and I-10 - inside the loop - Hausman Road is a city road, and work on that segment is ongoing under the direction of San Antonio's Department of Public Works.

For now, Hausman Road is all TxDOT's between the loop and Bandera Road; it's a secondary entryway into Helotes, and is the home of the Helotes Post Office.

TxDOT has plans to expand the road to a four-lane road with a center left turn lane, bike lanes and sidewalks - essentially matching the road the city is building inside the loop. For now, that plan is fairly general; no details have been etched in stone. This open house is an opportunity for folks who wish to have input on the project make sure they get a chance to be heard.

The open-house format will also allow people to ask questions of TxDOT planners and other staff.

Again, the meeting is tonight, Feb. 27, from 5 p.m. until 7 p.m. at the Helotes City Hall on Bandera Road.

I-10 Huebner: still a whole lot of walls

Still working on retaining walls through the project, and that will be the ongoing theme throughout the project for the foreseeable future.

Why so many dang retaining walls?

 

This project is adding lanes - one lane each way - to the main lanes of traffic. The main lanes are elevated in most locations, and are against hillsides in others. Plainly put, just about every linear foot of roadway we're working on needs a retaining wall to prevent deterioration of a hillside. At UTSA Blvd, for instance, the retaining wall is keeping the slope of the hill supporting the UTSA Blvd bridge from eroding away. The westbound side near the Huebner Oaks Shopping Center is getting a retaining wall in order to keep the right main lane from sliding into the frontage road.

The bottom line: retaining walls are a very important part of this project. In fact, we have 16 planned walls on this project. Once those walls are built, work on the actual road structures in those areas will start.

The biggest exception - and even this requires a lot of retaining wall work - is the reconstruction of the DeZavala Rd overpass. That year-long task is targeted to begin in March with the demolition of center median barrier to build temporary lanes. Traffic will switch in April, if all goes well.

 

Wurzbach Parkway update

Blanco to West

Consistently the biggest concern folks share is about the opening of the Blanco Road overpass bridge. Last week we posted a short video talking about the delay and the solution.

A paving subcontractor is on board to address the surface issues on the bridge deck. We're waiting to get an asphalt batch that meets approved standards (that comes from the asphalt plant), and we should be ready to pave just a day or two after a batch is approved. Project bosses are still targeting the end of March to have the bridge open, if weather permits.

Otherwise, a few small items are being addressed. These include:

- Lighting at the Blanco overpass. Some of the wiring hadn't been put in because of a blockage in the conduit. Electricians are saying the issue has been resolved and lights should be on this week.

- The westbound sign for Vista Del Norte. A bike lane sign was obscuring the VDN sign; we put our best guys on it this week and it is done.

- Yield signs for the westbound exit ramp to Blanco Road. We will not be posting yield signs at the end of exit ramps on this project, in line with our area-wide policy to replace yield signs with a double white line that shouldn't be crossed. The idea is safety; we've actually seen a reduction in crashes when we've removed the yield signs for the white lines.

West to Jones-Maltsberger

 

 

Jones-Maltsberger to Wetmore

Bridge crews are planning to pour the remaining bridge deck at Salado Creek this week. Meanwhile, the two abutments and first two (of four) column caps will be poured in the nest two weeks. Abutments and column caps serve as a resting spot for bridge support beams, which hold the bridge deck up. In a best-case scenario with weather and resources we would have the bridge deck built by Labor Day.

Meanwhile, three other areas are being addressed with effort: the westbound widening of Starcrest, the widening of Jones-Maltsberger and the entryway of the city's brush site. With concrete crews about to be made available (while concrete structures cure), project planners will move them over to the brush site entryway to hammer out some of the road work remaining there (the roadway is made up of concrete slabs in that vicinity).

The road widening at JM is still being coordinated; the driveways involved, plus the coordination with another contractor, have made planning sluggish. We should be ready to hit that area in March.

At Starcrest, though, we're looking at March 3 to start the work. This date is tentative and is still very weather dependent. The work will block one of the entrances to the soccer fields across from Gardenville, but only during the week. Bosses with Texas Sterling Construction have committed to do heat they can to be out of the way by the end of the week.

Southbound route to SAMMC to change (and other I-35 items)

SAMMC-area work

Next week - Friday morning, to be precise - the southbound I-35 exit to George Beach will be moved.

I bet right about now you're scratching your head, wondering how that will happen overnight....

A temporary ramp is being constructed, and it's a lot closer to George Beach than the current one is. In fact, the temporary ramp dumps traffic onto the frontage road right about at Petroleum Drive (a small, seldom-used road that once served as an additional entryway to Fort Sam Houston). When that ramp is opened Thursday night (Feb. 27), the current exit ramp to George Beach will close. Crews will begin turning that exit ramp into an entrance ramp from Rittiman Road. (I'm working on a graphic ... Hope to have it up Friday.)

Here's the rub: as it is, rush-hour traffic headed into SAMMC stacks up onto the main lanes while waiting to get into the gate of the base. With less frontage road to hold that traffic, that queue will likely stack up even more. We're advising people to use other gates to get into Fort Sam (where possible) or exit Rittiman and move through the signal there.

Whatever your route, you'll need to add a few minutes to your daily commute.

Olympia Parkway

Work continues in the northbound exit ramp to Olympia Parkway (we're adding an exit lane there), and (for the time being) it's carrying double the load while being rebuilt. The exit to FM 1518 remains closed to allow widening work to progress, pushing traffic headed to the FM road onto the Frontage road sooner by way of the Olympia Parkway ramp. The ramp for FM 1518 is on pace to reopen by April 1 (no Foolin'!).

The southbound side is nearing a change, though. Those who've been following know crews worked a ton of overtime to have the exit open - and all roads open to The Forum - by doing some temporary work. This includes placing temporary concrete barriers and leaving undone some asphalt work. Those temporary measures will be removed for the permanent solutions starting March 2.

This means the southbound exit to Olympia Parkway will close until the ramp is finished; project supervisors anticipate less three weeks. Traffic will exit FM 1518 to reach Olympia Parkway and Forum Parkway.

Widening

Road-builders are still working to add width to the main lanes and frontage roads, particularly between FM 1518 and Forum Parkway. This requires continued closures on the access roads, both directions, as paving operations and large trucks do what they need to do. Frontage roads are limited to a single lane during this work.

Crews are also working in what has been the shoulder area of the main lanes,  adding the space to make room for the extra lane of traffic being added. We hope to have most of this widening work done somewhere around Spring Break.