Premium ContentClick on Premium Content on the Featured navigation bar for information.
The federal stimulus program, which was designed to accelerate roads projects around the country, instead put the brakes on widening a major Omaha thoroughfare.
The chance to grab $3.5 million in stimulus funds was worth delaying a widening project along 132nd Street between West Maple Road and Blondo Street, Omaha officials decided.
Work was supposed to begin last summer. Now the project between the Champions and Eagle Run golf courses won't begin until next spring.
Preliminary work was begun in March, when utility lines were moved out of the way. Part of the street was closed for that work.
Area residents expected more crews to start work during the summer.
When nothing happened for months, a handful of residents in the nearby Sunridge neighborhood called the city. They complained that digging from the utility work was causing mud and rainwater to pool near the subdivision's entrances off 132nd Street.
Resident Mary Ellen Pollard was surprised to find out that the widening work had been put on hold because of the stimulus program.
“I thought that stimulus package was for projects that were ready to go,” she said Monday. “If it was ready to go, why didn't they proceed with it? . . . The barricades are up. Let's go get it done.”
Plans change, public works officials said.
Meeting federal stimulus guidelines for environmental studies on the 132nd Street project, plus other planning and documentation requirements, took several months, City Engineer Charlie Krajicek said.
“We expected to have some work going this year, but it just didn't work out,” he said.
The federal stimulus program was started last spring as an effort to boost the economy by quickly putting people to work. President Barack Obama and Congress approved $787 billion for a range of stimulus projects, including road construction.
Krajicek said the delay in the 132nd Street project is worth it because stimulus funds will cover 100 percent of the cost.
Initially, Omaha was to pay for 20 percent of the widening project — about $700,000 — with the rest coming from federal money.
“That's why you want to use stimulus — it's new money,” Krajicek said.
The city said another advantage to waiting is that construction work can start in the spring and be completed by the end of 2010.
Under the previous schedule, part of 132nd Street was going to be torn up over the winter months, and traffic would have been restricted during that time.
The city doesn't like to suspend projects for the winter, instead preferring to have an entire project done before cold weather hits.
The project will widen 132nd Street to five lanes. The street will have two lanes in each direction, as well as left turn lanes and medians. Currently, 132nd Street widens out only near West Maple and Blondo.
Pollard, who has lived in the neighborhood for more than 20 years, said that with increased traffic over the years, the street definitely needs to be widened.
Omaha also received stimulus money for street resurfacing across the city and for extra traffic signals in various locations. Those projects will take place next year, as well.
The States of Nebraska and Iowa didn't delay any road projects because of the stimulus program.
Mary Jo Oie, a Nebraska Roads Department spokeswoman, said Nebraska speeded up work on projects such as the Interstate 480 interchange in Omaha because of stimulus money. That project resumed at the end of August.
In Iowa, stimulus funding enabled officials to do more work than initially planned on a number of Interstate improvements, including a series of projects along I-29.
Krajicek said federal officials already had signed off on environmental and other studies for the I-480 work. The state was further along on that and other projects by the time the stimulus program was enacted.
Contact the writer:
444-1149, tom.shaw@owh.com
