Monday, April 15

Main Street Boerne progress....

After getting a few questions about the project on Main Street in Boerne, it's about time to provide an update (I'll try and get updates on this project out at least twice a month, when possible).

The project has three seperate segments - the Cibolo Creek bridge expansion, Construction of steel-armed traffic signals and crosswalk enhancements. Each segment is being built seperately from the ohter segments, though project supervisors routinely coordinate work with one another to ease the impact on daily commuters.

Crosswalk enhancements

Crews are about 60 percent of the way done with the intersection of Blanco Road, and they've already finished up at Bandera Street, River Road and Rosewood. When crews finish at Blanco - probably late next week - they'll move on to Johns Road. Work at Johns Road will take about a month, then the location at School Street will take about two weeks.

Crews pour concrete that will seat brick pavers across Blanco Road at Main Street in Boerne.
Of course, all that depends on weather.

Remember: while work is happening at these intersections, we'll have traffic restricted to a single lane in each direction. But, again, that's only in the specific intersection the crews are working on.

Traffic signals

All the underground work is finished, meaning pole foundations and the conduit carrying power lines to the signal poles have been put in. All the controller foundations are built as well. Well, except for the underground structures at Bandera Street. Crews are working there right now, and they'll be finished by the end of the month.

The new paver strips marking the crosswalks in downtown Boerne will add to the aesthetics of the Hill Country Mile. Meanwhile, traffic signals at intersections like this will be changed to steel mast arms over the next two months.

The mast arms are scheduled to arrive sometime in May, and crews will start installing them when they get in.

All in all, the work on the intersections should be finished by mid-summer.

The bridge

In late March, the contractor's drilling rig broke down and halted progress on the bridge. The contractor did everything they could without the driller, not letting the time go by unused, and the rig got back up and running again last week. As folks drive by, they can probably see the drill rig at work, drilling foundations for the support columns that will hold up the expanded portions of the bridge.

The drill rig, on the right, is back up and running after about two weeks of frustrating project supervisors. Crews have finished nearly all the preparatory work to be done at this point that does not involve drilling.