Cape Coral Parkway expansion delayed
The six-laning project of the Cape Coral Parkway East completion date has been pushed back due to some delays.
Cape Coral City Council, acting as the South Cape Community Redevelopment Agency Commission, received the update Wednesday.
Public Works Principal Engineer Wendy Williams said they encountered some delays when they addressed traffic flow when going past Coronado Parkway.
The delays have revolved around utilities and landscaping and signal improvements at eight intersections along Cape Coral Parkway.
Williams said they were hoping that Lee County would not require a full signal plan, which the county did, so a formal presentation with a signal plan was created.
“That was some delay in design,” she said, adding that as far as construction goes they wanted to wait until all the streetlights are in place.
The construction should be done by this time next year. She said they are at around 100% completion of plans right now, which will then go out to bid.
Council members asked how they could do better.
“We have communicated to our residents that we would start this in September,” Chair Jennifer Nelson-Lastra said. “What can we do better?”
Williams said she learned to include extra work time that may have to be done throughout a project. She said Lee County is currently working on 30-40 signal projects throughout the county that are in design, review and install.
“We will put that into our design schedule – a blackout of time in case. We made the wrong assumption that we would discuss it with them and see it as minor changes and not require a full signalization plan,” Williams said.
Mayor John Gunter said re-striping the roadway and changing some of the timing loops on the signals is not a huge project.
The contract with the designer of the project began about a year ago with the hope that construction would begin a month ago.
“It is a huge delay. At the beginning, that is what it looked like, a striping project and maybe some timing issues. When we went further and the scope went further geographically to the west, some landscaping elements and utilities elements,” were added, Williams said.
Although the retiming of the signals is something that can be done on computers, the project also includes putting in some new signal heads.
“It has become more to do it right. We can’t re-stripe what is there and be safe. We need to make it safe,” Williams said.
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