MEMORANDUM TO: Wayne Sabo, City Manager
CC: David Glasco, Manager Engineering & Construction
FROM: Shannon Hicks, Director of Public Works
DATE: February 18, 2009
SUBJECT: NASA Parkway Bridge Demolition
Texas Sterling, the general contractor for the current I-45 expansion project informed the City that starting Wednesday, March 4th, the NASA Parkway Bridge over I-45 will be closed. The contractor will begin milling up the asphalt on both approaches.
On Thursday, March 5th, the contractor will begin demolition of the bridge. Demolition is scheduled for March 5th through March 9th. The contractor stated that the interstate highway should be open by 5:00 AM on Monday, March 9th.
NASA Parkway will remain closed for up to 70 days (Approximate date of May 14th). Please note that the contractor has major incentives to complete this work early and will probably finish earlier than the May 14th date.
Alternate routes for the Webster area are:
FM 518
Bay Area Boulevard
El Dorado Boulevard
FM 2351 / Clear City Boulevard
The traveling public should expect major delays in the Webster area for the next 3 to 4 months.
Link to City of Webster info
3 comments:
Mr. Hagen,
Excellent post. I would hope that there is some kind of planning going on to ease (as best as possible) the influx of traffic that will be following these alternate routes. We have some time (not much) but I would think that there should be some plan other than to do nothing. We need to be proactive not reactive to the needs of our citizens. And let us remember that every single member of council has made easing our traffic problems a cornerstone of their campaigns.
Watch the Friendswood cops spend more time on BAB as more LC drivers have to run that way to avoid the NASA/45 fiasco.
Now if we could only figure out how to get Friendswood's citizens to come through BAB to League City so we can return the love.
As I understand it, the general idea is not to impede traffic that is already on NASA Road, going either direction. Webster wants to redirect traffic entering NASA Road from the freeway, onto the new NASA Parkway instead.
If redirecting congestion hurts a little business on the old route, relieving congestion in itself should protect both business and overall quality of life.
That's what we should be thinking, with our plan to make it easy for motorists to get off the freeway at FM96 instead of at Main Street.
But I worry that it's not what planners are thinking with their new Main Street Corridor plan, which admittedly wants to make Main Street a central destination and through-route.
Citizens and business people alike have said (at corridor planning meetings called "shout outs" and on questionnaires) that they want traffic relief.
Lets keep watching Webster and other communities, not necessarily Kemah, for our models.
See this link:
http://www.ci.league-city.tx.us/index.asp?NID=713
Better yet, search "Main Street Corridor" to find out how other communities have fared, and how corridor plans are sometimes seen as more than ambitious and expensive; the term "land grab" has been used more than once.
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