Overpass on Aquarena Springs Drive Expected to Begin in April

By Eryka Villarreal
KTSW News Reporter
*Story aired on March 4, 2015

The bus overpass project on Aquarena Springs Drive was projected to begin several years ago and experienced several delays, but it is now finally projected to start in April.

Utility relocations and waiting on one last parcel that needed to be acquired by the Texas Department of Transportation caused the bus overpass project on Aquarena to be delayed. As soon as TXDOT acquires the last parcel then the utility relocation can be finalized.

Senior Engineer for the City of San Marcos, Rey Garcia, says a pre-construction meeting is scheduled next week with TXDOT and the contractor to have more definitive answers as to when exactly they’ll mobilize and begin work.

“They can do some other things on the site as far as waterline installation. Thats one of the things we’re going to talk about is where they’re going to start and on the timing,” said Garcia. “The overall project hasn’t changed its still going to take about two years to finish the entire bridge project.”

The limits of the bridge project go from Thorpe all the way to Charles Austin and Garcia says the waterline installation would be the start of the project, which will kick off at the beginning of April.

However, Garcia doesn’t think it will take more than six months, but will discuss the timing at their meeting.

Garcia says they plan on keeping the same number of lanes opened, but says there will be detours assigned throughout the project.

“There will be one phase of the project where we will have to bottleneck it down to two lanes or one lane in each direction, but that’s going to be for a very small duration,” said Garcia “We’re looking at maybe somewhere between 4-6 week where we’ll have that bottle neck.”

The last thing of the construction project is the actual bridge.

As far as timing goes and areas affected by the project, more information will be given after the pre-constructed meeting on March 11th.