Traffic barricades removed, in downtown Beatrice

BEATRICE – The traffic barricades came down, in the business district of downtown Beatrice, Friday.

Water Main replacement work has been finished by Myers Construction in the core downtown area. Traffic can now use Court Street in both directions from Second Street to Seventh Street. Myers Construction will continue work on Court Street from Seventh to Ninth, but only the eastbound lane will be closed…..allowing motorists to use the center lane and westbound lane.  Once that work is completed, crews will move into a third phase of the project, which is on Market Street, from Third to Sixth.

Public works officials said this week the reopening of Court was projected to happen around October 14th, but said Friday was an option, pending completion of some final work to cover open areas at some downtown intersections. City Street Superintendent Jason Moore says street crews worked extended hours to fill in the last spots.

"We saw it was going to be considerably cooler and that next week was going to be in the upper 50s and maybe low 60s. So, we felt maybe it was better for us to try to do a little more. So, we worked a little bit longer day and got thing done and tried to get things wrapped up, as quick as we could."

Moore said the street department could only work as fast as the contractors… generally a day to a day and a half behind them as they were replacing the base with concrete in open trenches.

The city obtains its hot asphalt mix from Waverly. Moore says the contractors were going to install the last concrete in open trenches on Court, but city crews finished that work, instead. Next year, a Nebraska Department of Transportation project will involve installing a new asphalt road surface on Court, from Second Street to the east.

"If it gets milled down, which it will...and the asphalt will go over the top of it...that concrete patch...whatever is underneath there...whatever the outline of that concrete patch will come back up through that asphalt. They'll come in and do the concrete ADA ramps first before they mill...so as they're doing that, we're still going to be working in the spring to get as many concrete patches out, that have been put in over the years....and replace them with asphalt."

The project has involved replacing old water mains that were around 90-to-100 years old and making business service connections to the new mains. The barricades were removed just before noon, on Friday.