According to city engineer Kul Sharma, the east-west artery in northern Tracy that’s been under construction for more than a year can’t be paved until the outside temperature is consistently above 65 degrees.
But as soon as the weather warms and work is finished on the street's south sidewalk, Sharma said, crews will grind down the existing bumpy street surface and lay down a new, 2½-inch thick layer of blacktop.
It will mark the final phase of a drawn-out effort to replace aging infrastructure beneath Grant Line Road, a project Sharma said was much-needed.
“Most of those lines are very old, and they are dysfunctional and we’ve had multiple repairs over there,” he said.
The water main, as well as sewage lines, water lines and storm drains, was replaced between Tracy Boulevard and MacArthur Drive.
One of the tricky parts of the project, the city engineer explained, was that the sewer and water lines between the main — which runs down the middle of the street — and businesses, homes and apartments lining the boulevard had to be dug up and replaced.
That partially accounts for the wheel-jarring state of the road, as crews had to continually dig up and patch the driving surface.
That’s drawn plenty of complaints from motorists jostled by the uneven pavement and confused by construction signs, as well as from nearby residents, who have complained about being without water, power and parking for stretches of time.
Other setbacks delayed the project’s completion date.
While digging out the crumbling infrastructure, crews found pipes and lines that weren’t on any schematic. And while an AT&T line and a Chevron gas main were identifiable, many were unclaimed, and Sharma said that excavators took significant time to determine what was in those pipes, if anything at all, out of an abundance of caution.
“The main problem was, when we were doing all those utility connections, there were conflicts with existing lines,” Sharma said.
But that’s all done, he said.
“The majority of the difficult work, the work which has conflicts, is all complete.”
All that’s left is some sidewalk construction on the south side of Grant Line Road, laying the asphalt and building a few landscape medians.
Sharma hopes it’ll be done as soon as April.
“Of course, weather permitting,” he said on a rainy Friday. “For example, today, we can’t have any work done.”
At a glance
• The Grant Line Road infrastructure replacement and repaving project, when all is said and done, will cost $5.2 million. It’s being paid for by county Measure K sales tax revenue, gas tax revenue and infill development fees
That way if they rupture an undocumented water line or breech a sewer line they have the contractor coming quickly to take care of it. It seems like this project has been over extended due to poor project management and a lack of proper scheduling.
Would it have been better to throw caution to the wind and have the contractor rupture an undocumented gas line? Or how about replacing the sewer line, then repaving the street. Then in 6 months the water line, then repaving the street. Then..... (you get my drift). I worked for a Bay Area city for 18 years and listened to caller after caller with the same complaints I've been reading in these blogs and that was WITH Granite Construction as one of the contractors doing the work.
This project was inconvenient and hard on people and businesses, but it had to be done. Aging infrastructures must be replaced BEFORE something catastrophic happens (ie. San Bruno). Imagine the mess there would have been on Grant Line Road if the water main unexpectedly blew at 6 a.m. on a weekday. By the time the crews got to the site to shut off the water, there would be mud and debris washing down the street and possibly into businesses. The businesses connected to that line would be without water for an unknown, but extended period of time. All traffic would have to be diverted around the area, because an uncontrolled blown water main will leave a huge hole in the center of the street.
And imagine the monetary impact on the affected businesses if this happened over and over because projects like this one are not done or are done incompletely because City staff are worried about the "inconvenience" doing the job right will have. I frequented businesses on Grant Line Road during this construction and experienced everything complained about by others, but knowing how well the 11th Street project turned out, I choose to see the "glass half full" this time.
City of Tracy should hire LOCAL CONTRACTORS to due work in our town.