Board awards bids for Forty Foot Road bottleneck widening
TOWAMENCIN » A long-discussed road widening project in Towamencin has cleared a major hurdle, and now has a tentative start date.
The township supervisors voted unanimously Wednesday to award a set of three contracts relating to the widening of, and a new traffic signal on, Forty Foot Road.
“This project is to remote the pinch point on Forty Foot Road near its intersection with Tomlinson and Heebner Roads,” said board Chairman Chuck Wilson.
Since late 2015 the township has planned to widen Forty Foot and widen a bottleneck where two lanes merge into one just south of a signal at Tomlinson Road, and heading south and westbound one lane becomes a right-turn
only at the same intersection, a layout left over from when the rest of the roadway was widened in the early 2000s.
In early 2019 Towamencin secured a $1 million grant from PennDOT for the widening, which would be matched by an $825,000 grant from the state’s Department of Community and Economic Development that was secured in 2017, and an $800,000 contribution from developer PSDC that firm agreed to donate in conjunction their plans to build age-restricted housing near the adjacent Towamencin Village Shopping Center.
In January the board secured two strips of property needed for the widening, and authorized the township’s solicitor to start a declaration of taking for a third; by early March all three had been secured and the board voted to put the construction out for bid.
“The township engineer has received six bids, and recommends awarding to the qualified low bidder, Road-Con of West Chester, for the amount of $1,296,458,” Wilson said.
“The anticipated notice to proceed date is on or about July 1, 2020, pending the pre-construction meeting,” he said.
The supervisors then voted unanimously to award the contract, which Wilson said would be covered by the two grants and/ or the matching funds and require no local taxpayer dollars. A second contract relating to the same project was also awarded, and would be similarly covered by funds already received, for traffic engineer McMahon and Associates to perform the engineering supervision, administration and inspection for the project, for a total price of $149,200.
“This fee is within the project’s budget, and is funded through the grant,” Wilson said.
A third contract relates to the widening project, but just north of the same intersection: the board accepted a proposal from McMahon for $7,500 to do engineering for a traffic signal proposed to be installed on Forty Foot at the intersection with Newbury Way, where a new driveway is planned to be built on the
across from Newbury to provide access to the new PSDC housing.
“The traffic signal was not included in the initial construction phase, because PennDOT advised the actual signal installation would not be done until the traffic volume meets warrants based on the redevelopment of the shopping center,” Wilson said.
That McMahon contract would also be covered by the grant and matching funds, according to Wilson, and staff have said the new signal could be constructed but covered until the shopping center redevelopment is done, which could be as soon as summer 2021.