by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
The surprise excavation of underground trolley rails has knocked the City’s Hendricks Avenue construction project off track.
City contractors uncovered a network of thousands of buried railroad ties while installing new utility lines under the San Marco street. The rails will have to be individually cut out of the ground. The added work means the project will likely push beyond the original October 2006 completion date and could drive up the cost, said Public Works Spokesperson Marci Cook.
“There’s about a 100 percent chance that this will impact the construction schedule and there’s the possibility for a financial impact as well,” said Cook.
That means traffic will remain squeezed to two lanes on the heavily-traveled corridor connecting downtown and San Marco’s popular lunch spots.
The discovery came as a surprise; planners didn’t know San Marco had trolleys running along Hendricks. Cook said some rails will be saved in case preservationists want to keep them.
Cook said public work projects are always allowed some leeway in scheduling and budgeting for unforeseen contingencies. But she said pulling about 3,000 buried railroad ties out of the street is more than planners bargained for. The rails have to be cut out of the ground with chainsaws.
“It was a real surprise for us. We always set time aside for contingencies but not to this extent,” she said.
The good news for drivers and businesses in the area is that the discovery was made early. That gives the City time to make up for lost time later with an accelerated work schedule, if necessary. That was the case when the City remade Bay Street in about five months to have it ready for the Super Bowl.
When the $7 million project is finished, the City envisions the stretch of road between Mitchell Avenue and Prudential Drive as a gateway connecting the Southbank to the Southside. The project will plant trees, resurface roads, widen sidewalks, improve drainage and install historic lighting. It’s all designed to bring pedestrians to San Marco’s east side.