Upper management with Webber Construction checked in this week on progress on the I-10 Huebner project, which has been hampered in part over the last several weeks by difficulties with some of the retaining walls along the project.
As has been written before, the soil nail walls have presented challenges to crews assigned to the project, and have caused larger portions of work to be pushed back a bit.
The visit resulted in project personnel being directed to spur the project along at a faster rate, and to find quick resolutions to the issues with the soil nail wals. Additional work crews are being committed to the project with the new year, affording some more resources to complete work in time for the end-of-2014 deadline.
Here's what all of this means for those driving in the area:
The first major traffic shift at DeZavala Road - a shift initially scheduled to take place as early as October 2013 - will happen early in the first quarter of 2014. Right now Webber is targeting early February, though a precise date has not yet been set. As part of the effort to widen I-10 by a lane in each direction, we're also lifting the DeZavala overpass bridge - which requires us to make the bridge longer as well (something about the geometry of the bridge).
This means we're effectively reconstructing the bridge, one side at a time. All told, the work at that intersection alone will take almost a full year. The eastbound side will get the work first, and traffic will be shifted over to use the current westbound side. We'll have three narrow (11 feet wide) lanes in each direction - which means the auxiliary lanes used by traffic entering and exiting the highway will be done away with.
This pinch point will, do doubt, impact the daily traffic for both morning and evening commuters.
