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349 reliever work set; Holiday Hill extended
- Route comes in $11.2 million under budget, second phase to begin this fall
by Bob Campbell
Midland Reporter-Telegram
By Bob Campbell
Staff Writer
Jones Brothers Dirt & Paving Contractors of Odessa is building a $3.5 million extension of Holiday Hill Road in northwest Midland and in early August will start on the long-awaited La Entrada al Pacifico trade corridor-related Highway 349 reliever route.
Texas Department of Transportation spokesman Glen Larum said Monday that the commercial loop's initial $10,322,741 contract -- less than half the originally projected amount -- will be completed in 15 months with two lanes running west from Highway 349 some 4 miles north of town to the Highway 158 crossing.
"It was 52 percent under the engineer's estimate of $21.5 million," said Larum. "If the second bid comes in anything like that, the total cost will be about half the expected $35 million.
"TxDOT has taken a lot of projects off the table and there was tremendous competition for a smaller slice of the pie. There may have been local bid considerations that made it possible for Jones to underbid the others. They were all bidding aggressively for this project."
Noting Jones got the assignment over Price Construction of Big Spring, the T.J. Lambrecht Co. of Joliet, Ill., and C. Watts & Sons of Oklahoma City, Larum said the Odessa company will finish Holiday Hill Road's 3.3-mile extension from Briarwood Avenue north to the 349 reliever in nine months.
He said TxDOT will open bids in October for the route's second phase west from 158, where an overpass for 158 traffic may be built, to Farm to Market Road 1788 about 2 miles north of Highway 191 west-northwest of Midland.
Conceived as an eventual four-lane highway, the reliever's eastbound lanes will be laid first across 16 miles of uncut land for which right-of-way negotiations were sometimes tortuous. Numerous utility wires had to be moved while high pressure oilfield lines were buried deeper.
"It's unusual for a project to be conceived and go to construction in two or three years," Larum said. "It is a process in most cases with a 10-year window."
He said Jones has bladed a center line for surveying and staking. "You can see right where it's going," he said.
Larum said Holiday Hill Road's and the 349 reliever's being built across new land will hasten the work because Jones does not have any traffic to contend with but its own.
J.L. Steel Co. of Roanoke, in northeast Texas, recently turned over to TxDOT a $941,000 Jal Draw culvert with nine 7- by 10-foot concrete "boxes" at the route's west end on County Road 60 a mile east of 1788. The culvert will ease northwestern to southeastern water drainage.
Midland Odessa Transporation Alliance (MOTRAN) President James Beauchamp hopes a $7 million Highway 158 overpass is built now that the project is under budget because it would be safer. "It's not a high traffic intersection, but a lot of it is trucks and oilfield related," he said.
"We're creating a four-lane divided highway linkage of the four major metropolitan areas in West Texas -- Amarillo, Lubbock and Midland-Odessa. It will also help with University Interscholastic League competitions and college kids going back and forth. It just makes sense."
Bob Campbell can be reached at campbell@mrt.com.
Staff Writer
Jones Brothers Dirt & Paving Contractors of Odessa is building a $3.5 million extension of Holiday Hill Road in northwest Midland and in early August will start on the long-awaited La Entrada al Pacifico trade corridor-related Highway 349 reliever route.
Texas Department of Transportation spokesman Glen Larum said Monday that the commercial loop's initial $10,322,741 contract -- less than half the originally projected amount -- will be completed in 15 months with two lanes running west from Highway 349 some 4 miles north of town to the Highway 158 crossing.
"It was 52 percent under the engineer's estimate of $21.5 million," said Larum. "If the second bid comes in anything like that, the total cost will be about half the expected $35 million.
"TxDOT has taken a lot of projects off the table and there was tremendous competition for a smaller slice of the pie. There may have been local bid considerations that made it possible for Jones to underbid the others. They were all bidding aggressively for this project."
Noting Jones got the assignment over Price Construction of Big Spring, the T.J. Lambrecht Co. of Joliet, Ill., and C. Watts & Sons of Oklahoma City, Larum said the Odessa company will finish Holiday Hill Road's 3.3-mile extension from Briarwood Avenue north to the 349 reliever in nine months.
He said TxDOT will open bids in October for the route's second phase west from 158, where an overpass for 158 traffic may be built, to Farm to Market Road 1788 about 2 miles north of Highway 191 west-northwest of Midland.
Conceived as an eventual four-lane highway, the reliever's eastbound lanes will be laid first across 16 miles of uncut land for which right-of-way negotiations were sometimes tortuous. Numerous utility wires had to be moved while high pressure oilfield lines were buried deeper.
"It's unusual for a project to be conceived and go to construction in two or three years," Larum said. "It is a process in most cases with a 10-year window."
He said Jones has bladed a center line for surveying and staking. "You can see right where it's going," he said.
Larum said Holiday Hill Road's and the 349 reliever's being built across new land will hasten the work because Jones does not have any traffic to contend with but its own.
J.L. Steel Co. of Roanoke, in northeast Texas, recently turned over to TxDOT a $941,000 Jal Draw culvert with nine 7- by 10-foot concrete "boxes" at the route's west end on County Road 60 a mile east of 1788. The culvert will ease northwestern to southeastern water drainage.
Midland Odessa Transporation Alliance (MOTRAN) President James Beauchamp hopes a $7 million Highway 158 overpass is built now that the project is under budget because it would be safer. "It's not a high traffic intersection, but a lot of it is trucks and oilfield related," he said.
"We're creating a four-lane divided highway linkage of the four major metropolitan areas in West Texas -- Amarillo, Lubbock and Midland-Odessa. It will also help with University Interscholastic League competitions and college kids going back and forth. It just makes sense."
Bob Campbell can be reached at campbell@mrt.com.
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The following are comments from the readers. In no way do they represent the view of mywesttexas.com.
the-eurasianearthlink.net wrote on Jul 2, 2008 1:21 PM:
" EXPERIMENTAL & PURSUANT TO THE 5TH AMENDMENT:
On MOTRAN'S Beauchap's press release of a $7 Million Hwy 158 overpass, cost can be cut by constructing as few lanes as possible for the low traffic truck route --- since according to Beauchamp's admission, it is not a high traffic intersection and is used mostly by trucks that are oilfield related. "
On MOTRAN'S Beauchap's press release of a $7 Million Hwy 158 overpass, cost can be cut by constructing as few lanes as possible for the low traffic truck route --- since according to Beauchamp's admission, it is not a high traffic intersection and is used mostly by trucks that are oilfield related. "
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the-eurasianearthlink.net wrote on Jul 1, 2008 9:17 AM:
This 349 reiever route is actually to bring goods in a north south, south north direction using trucks. THIS IS A BIG HUGE COSTLY MISTAKE!!!
Instead of building this north-south truck highway, we should instead use the money to build north south, south north railroads to bring goods to and from the Mexican coast or coasts FROM AND TO MIDDLE CANADA AND MIDDLE UNITED STATES, MIDDLE NORTH AMERICA!!!!
RAIL IS MUCH MORE EFFICIENT THAN TRUCKING!!! AND THIS WILL BECOME MORE AND MORE IMPORTANT AS THE PRICE OF FUEL RISES. TRAINS CAN USE COAL TO POWER STEAM ENGINES AND STEAM TURBINES. IT WOULD BE FUNNY IF YOU USE COAL TO PRODUCE STEAM TO RUN A TRUCK!!!
This shipping by train in a north south dirction betweem the Mexican Coast to/from Middle US and Middle Canada was/is eurasian's solution to MOTRAN'S BUDDY SIPES AND BEAUCHAMP AND ODESSA TXDOT'S GLEN LARUM ON THE CRAIG ANDERSON SHOW. GOVERNOR RICHARDSON OF NEW MEXICO SHOULD NOT BE THE ONE DOING THIS BECAUSE THIS IS AN INVENTION PROCESS THAT WAS INVENTED HERE IN MIDLAND TEXAS BY EURASIAN. YOU SEE HOW WE MIDLANDERS END UP SUCKERS???? THIS PROPOSAL WAS NOT INVENTED IN NEW MEXICO, NOR SAN ANTONIO, NOR HOUSTON, NOR DALLAS, ETCETERA. THIS WAS PROPOSED HERE IN MIDLAND,TEXAS. IF I HAD A PATENT FOR THIS, ALL THESE PEOPLE AND REGIONS WOULD NEED EURASIAN'S PERMISSION TO USE THIS INVENTION. NOT TO DO SO WOULD BE A VIOLATION OF EURASIAN'S PATENT OR PATENTS. BUT EURASIAN HAS SOMETHING BETTER!!! AND IT IS THE 5th AMENDMENT --- BECAUSE PATENT LAW HAS BEEN PROSTITUTED BY CONGRESS AND THE SPECIAL INTERESTS AND CONGRESSMAN CONAWAY DOES NOT EVEN BLOG IN THESE MRT FORUMS, THUS MAKING IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR EURASIAN TO TALK TO HIM TO REFORM THIS OUTRAGEROU US PATENT LAW. "