Street crews keeping busy with Beatrice repair projects

BEATRICE – Beatrice City Street crews are plenty busy as summer heads to fall, doing repair work on various streets or replacing sections of asphalt. One area in the downtown district is among the latest spots to get some attention.  The eastbound lane of Court Street is closed for work this week, with traffic able to flow in both directions by using the middle turn lane for eastbound travel.

"That's just an area we have with some asphalt rutting...we're going to go in and mill it down about four inches, square up a spot that's giving us some troubles, and replace the asphalt."  Street Superintendent Jason Moore says his crews are completing work this week on a section of East Scott Street near the intersection of 16th Street.

"That's an asphalt section that had a deterioration...a large pothole that we had and we kind of nursed it along. We're going to to the same thing....mill it down about six inches and then go in and replace some of the asphalt." That street section could be reopened Wednesday.

Crews have also done repairs or new sections on parts of 8th, 12th, 16th, 19th and at the city recycling site in recent weeks. "We worked on our concrete earlier in the year and we tried getting a lot of that done. We still have a few projects we want to get done before winter. Right now, we really like to look at August, September and maybe a little of October as our asphalt season. We'll do somewhere between three and five hundred tons of asphalt in that, probably two-and-a-half month period."

Moore says crews will tackle at least a dozen more locations in the city for asphalt repairs, prior to a bridge rail replacement project slated for October. New decorative rails will be installed on the South Sixth Street Big Blue River bridge, similar to those installed earlier on the West Court bridge river crossing.

Motorists are reminded to drive with caution around work zones where street crews are present.