Riverside trail finish delayed until 2023
Gas company supply-chain issues among reasons for the holdup
MUNCIE — By now, we should be seeing lots of walkers, cyclers, skaters, dogs and baby strollers on the Riverside Avenue trail.
Instead, the 1.4-mile route between the Morrison Road roundabout and Christy Woods remains a construction zone.
On the morning of Sept. 19, nearly 20 utility-line workers wearing neon lime vests and hard hats worked in and around holes in three separate locations along the corridor.
“Yes, what you are hearing is true,” said David Heilman, a consultant on the multi-million-dollar project. “The trail will not be fully opened until next summer.”
The street recently was lined with an excavator, a front end loader, two backhoes, dump trucks, orange traffic cones, pipes, construction trailers, orange warning-barrier fencing, box trucks, piles of gravel and dirt, and orange signs warning motorists to “Be Prepared to Stop.”
“The water company (Indiana-American Water), the gas company (CenterPoint Energy), and (the electric company) AEP replaced a significant amount of aging infrastructure along Riverside this year, and even had to expand their scope as they uncovered the state of the existing pipelines,” Heilman told me.
“Both the water and gas company have run into unforeseen conditions and supply chain issues that have prolonged their construction timelines. The water company plans to be done in October, but the gas company’s supply chain issues have them thinking that they will not be completed until spring of 2023.
“This pushes our project out to next year, as we do not want the utilities tearing up the newly paved trail or road. It looks as if construction, which includes a significant amount of stormwater work, finishing the trail, and reconstructing the road should be completed summer of 2023.”
“We are working with our contractor to try and complete as much as possible this year. This includes the sidewalk work at the Tillotson Avenue/Riverside Avenue intersection, and securing the job site so that it is safe for trail users … and residents who have to pull into their driveways.”
Even though it’s not finished, people are using the trail now, despite the fact that it is just stone, said Heilman, a landscape architect at Flatland Resources, Muncie, in an email.
The trail’s stone base has been graded and compacted from Tillotson to Brentwood Lane on the east end of the project and from Pineview at Riverside subdivision to the end of the project at the Morrison roundabout.
The middle section of the trail is where the utilities are working.
I was told in May that the cost of the project was nearing $4 million, or nearly five times the trail’s price tag when its construction was first announced in May of 2019 by Gov. Eric Holcomb. I also was told to expect the trail to be finished in September of 2022. Construction contracts called for substantial completion by Sept. 30 of this year.
In addition to the trail, the project includes improvements to Riverside, currently hazardous because of rough pavement and potholes; a road diet; realignment of the intersection of Riverside and Jackson Street; extensive storm-drain improvements; a new sidewalk to connect the Catalina Swim Club to the Riverside trail; new trees along the corridor; and expensive new water lines.
A unique feature of the project is a road diet at the Jackson/Riverside intersection.
The road diet will reduce Riverside east of Jackson from four lanes to two.
Also, Riverside/Jackson will be reconfigured from its current diagonal intersection to a more perpendicular junction.
Upon completion, all traffic will stop at the intersection except for eastbound thru vehicles on Jackson. As a result, the intersection will no longer be used like an off ramp by eastbound Jackson motorists turning left onto Riverside at speeds of 40 mph or so.
Previously, in Greater Muncie:
Good Article!
I just drove through there—it’s a mess.