‘SAFE ROUTES’ PROJECT GETS THE GREEN LIGHT
Contractor given OK to start work with April 2019 target to finish
The biggest milestone yet is now in the rearview mirror for a longawaited sidewalk project in North Wales.
A timeline has now been finalized for completion of the borough’s Safe Routes to School sidewalk update program, according to Borough Manager Christine Hart.
“We did get a notice to proceed for the Safe Routes to School project. It will be 10 years, in October, that this project has taken to get initiated,” Hart said.
“This is a huge step,” she said.
Council started talks in 2008 about a federally funded grant program to install new sidewalks for students walking to North Wales Area Elementary school on parts of Washington Avenue, Fairview Avenue and West Prospect Avenue. Grant funds were secured in 2009, but changing borough administrations and problems with securing access rights have left that project unfinished for the better part of a decade.
In the summer of 2017, staff began a renewed push to secure the last needed rights-of-way, with final documents submitted at the end of 2017. Hart announced during the Sept. 11 council meeting that she met with PennDOT officials and the borough’s traffic engineering consultant on Sept. 5, and that meeting resulted in a formal notice to proceed.
“Verizon, Comcast, and the (North Wales) water authority will be utilizing September to relocate power poles: there’s two that need to be removed, and one fire hydrant,” Hart said.
“After September, the project was awarded to Marino Construction from Skippack, and they intend on starting sometime in October,” Hart said.
Roughly 80 residents in the affected area, including two in Upper Gwynedd, will get letters this week giving an update, according to the manager. A staging area has been designated near a dead-end on Washington Avenue, and the notice to proceed sets out a time period of 241 days for the contractor to finish the project, with a deadline of April 11, 2019.
Council member Wendy McClure asked if the sidewalk work would interfere with any borough road projects planned for 2018 or 2019, and Hart said it would not.
“No, that was intentional,” Hart said.
Part of Swartley Street and Highland Avenue are scheduled for paving, but not in the immediate area of the project, she said.
“Our paving should be starting almost any day now. If it wasn’t raining this week, it would already be started, and they have until mid-October. I don’t think their paths will cross,” said Hart.
Upper Gwynedd and North Penn School District
administrators have been kept up to date on the project, the manager said, and some children who walk to
school on the streets where sidewalks will be added, may need to modify their routes slightly once construction starts.
“Everybody should be on the same page,” Hart said.
North Wales Borough Council next meets at 7 p.m. on Sept. 25 at the borough municipal building, 300 School St.
For more information or meeting agendas and materials visit www. NorthWalesBorough.org.