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Work on accessibility improvements on Fifth Street North between the Magnolia Bowl and the Highway 82 interchange should kick off later this year, according to City Engineer Kevin Stafford.
Back in March of last year, the city of Columbus and Lowndes County collaborated to land a $1.3 million Transportation Alternatives Program grant from the Mississippi Department of Transportation. The project’s primary purpose is to make the corridor between Fifth Avenue North and Ninth Avenue North friendlier for pedestrians and bike riders.
The city will provide up to $400,000 in matching funds from its internet sales tax revenue, which by law must be spent on road work.
As it stands now, there aren’t any sidewalks or bike lanes, and the width of the road encourages speeding. The project will add sidewalks, bike lanes, landscaping and islands in the middle of the road. At least one, and as many as three, pedestrian crossings will be added.
Plans are about 30% complete, Stafford said.
“MDOT has certain milestones that you have to hit (for oversight),” he said. “A field review is set at about 30% so they can make sure we’re not getting ahead of our skis. We’ll mark it in the field and they’ll come in and we’ll show them conceptually what we’re planning to do.”
Stafford said he expects a final review of the city’s plans sometime this summer.
“We’ll have what’s called an office review once we’re about at about 90-95% design,” he said. “If that goes well we’ll submit a plans, specifications and estimates package, which is all the final stuff.”
Between that initial field review and the office review, Stafford said he wants to get input from those who will be most affected by the work.
“I want to go to talk to all the business owners who will be impacted and make sure they understand what we’re doing,” he said. “If they have anything they’d like to see that we can all agree on, then between the 30% and 90% is when we can make those adjustments.”
Work will hopefully begin in the middle to late fall, Stafford said.
“We’ll probably have a late summer/early fall bid process with shovels in the ground middle to late fall,” he said. “We hope it will be complete early spring of next year. A lot of the work is curb and gutter and concrete, and that’s all work you can do (at that time of year.)”
Stafford said it was unlikely the road would have to be closed, but traffic would have to be reduced to one lane during parts of the work.
“I would think this type of construction will probably be able to be done under normal traffic,” he said. “There may be one or two days where you have flagmen out there and you’re down to one lane only, but for the most part I envision this work can be done under traffic.”
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 33 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
