The State and Regional Permits required provide guidelines as to when work may be done in the channel areas. Construction can ONLY occur from March to October. The Town expects an award of construction to take place by April and work to begin shortly thereafter. The Council is commenting on a proposed construction schedule at their March 16, 2016 Council Meeting (Staff Report).The project will have significant traffic and neighborhood impacts on Marsh Road in order to perform the work and to allow for construction equipment and material staging. There will be unavoidable impacts to traffic flow and significant impacts to the surrounding neighborhoods (traffic, noise, etc.).
The project construction is wedged between the immovable boundaries of April 15 and October 15 (State law). The project is further constricted by school traffic/timing and the Town’s waste hauler route audit. It has also been suggested that the project limit its impact during the school year (mid-June and early-August) – to accommodate these boundaries, the project construction period would be limited to mid-May 2016 to mid-October 2016 (5 months) – pushing the project to school year end or school year beginning, but not both.
If all the weekdays in the above period were open, this limits the project to 100 construction days; assuming the project is confined to the Town’s established Monday through Friday, 8 am to 5 pm construction requirements. That is not sufficient time for the project to complete. Staff worked with the construction management professional and developed three potential construction schedules addressing the concerns as much as possible. In broad summary, the proposed construction schedule would involve an 8-week full closure (48 working days) of Marsh Road (access to local driveways permitted) with active construction from 9 am to 8 pm, Monday through Saturday. The remainder of the necessary construction period (42 days) would have daytime flagging of 1-lane, 2-way traffic control and active construction from 9 am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday.