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Jones Creek construction headaches, updates

8 years 2 months 2 weeks ago Friday, September 16 2016 Sep 16, 2016 September 16, 2016 9:02 PM September 16, 2016 in News
Source: WBRZ

BATON ROUGE - It's been more than a year since construction started on Jones Creek Road and patience is running thin. Crews are making progress by the past few months have been tough on drivers and businesses.

The project began last July. Crews are currently working to expand the road from two to four lanes. It will be widened between Coursey and Tiger Bend.

"It's been like this since May," said Nadine Darsam.

She's talking about the intersection of Jones Creek and Coursey, where construction has ripped out a turn lane and turn signal from the area and replaced it with headaches and detours. Darsam says she's watching grass grow in the section of road and she's worried about the time line and how much longer she'll have to wait to make a proper turn.

"I want to know why a block of construction is taking a year to fix," she says.

City-parish project manager Mike Olson says work as been impacted by weather. So far, there's been about 36 additional adverse weather days and eleven of those happened in August.

It has also taken about two and a half months to install and test a sewer main to make sure it's working properly.

Project contractor JB James is working day and night and has multiple crews working on Phase 1 of the project, which is the west side of Jones Creek.

While Darsam is tired of waiting up to 35 minutes to travel three blocks from the construction to her home, Olson says drivers should start to see some improvement next month. Concrete paving will begin the first week of October and the northwest area adjacent to Exxon will be the starting point.

Olson says that area will have a signal and turn lane open to traffic as soon as possible.

The project will move into the second phase on the east side of Jones Creek soon after. Construction work is almost halfway finished. Olson says the project completion date is set for Spring 2017.

 

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