MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — A new contract has been approved for the City of Morgantown 2024 Street Improvement Plan.
Morgantown City Council unanimously approved a contract awarded to Anderson Excavating LLC. valued at approximately $792,000. This will account for the paving of 45 city roads in four city neighborhoods. Deputy Director of the City’s Engineering and Public Works Department, Megan Deeley, told the council that roads will begin to see improvements within the next couple of months, and the plan will not include any installation of ADA curb ramps around city streets.
“It’s 5 and a half miles of paving, and it was streets only this year, no ADA ramps, we’ll get to those later,” said Deeley. “We have found, in the past, that there’s some quality concern issues doing ramps and then paving,” she said.
The selection of the bid from Anderson Excavating LLC. was made among three other contracts that responded to the request for a proposal.
The majority of the roads that will see improvements as part of the 2024 City Street Improvement Plan will be located in the Greenmont neighborhood. That will include 27 roads of various lengths, totaling approximately 16,000 feet of road that will be milled or paved. The Evansdale neighborhood will see 10 streets paved, totaling around 5,700 feet of road. The Sabraton neighborhood will see seven roads treated, accounting for around 6,500 feet of road. Deeley added that roads as part of the 2024 Street Improvement Plan were determined by the City of Morgantown Engineering Department based on the ability to completely fix a certain road and how potential costs could affect other roads from getting paved.
“The worse in shape the road is, the more money the budget takes,” said Deeley. “There are a couple this year that are quite bad that we’re doing kind of in the Evansdale area, they’re going to take a little bit more effort to repair,” she said.
Deeley also addressed councilor concerns related to parking, which was a regular complaint from residents during the 2023 Morgantown Street Improvement Plan. For 2024, the City Department of Engineering and Public Works told councilors that the paving projects will be staggered and done within a singular location to avoid parking problems in various neighborhoods. According to Deeley, this was due to the planning of the paving projects, which forced road crews to travel to multiple neighborhoods in a single time frame, in turn affecting resident parking for months.
“That was one of the goals (for this year) of kind of centralizing some of the paving, so we can control some of that schedule better,” said Deeley. “Where our contractors are not zig-zagging all over town, then we can do a little more in-depth look at an area,” she said.
Deeley also noted that projects related to the paving of First Street and curb ramp sidewalk improvements on North Street will be completed ahead of the start of the 2024 City Street Improvement Plan. The plan will also address a subproject on North High Street, which will place 4 feet of Base 2 over a compacted subbase along 838 feet of road with a width of 28 feet. The hope for the City of Morgantown Engineering and Public Works Department is that the work will be completed by the time West Virginia University students return for the fall semester.
“On June 3, we’re holding the pre-construction meeting, which will begin paving a few days after that,” said Deeley. “And wrapping up well before students are back,” she said.