Travelers along Kennedy Avenue should expect the construction between Highway Avenue and 45th Street to get more congested before it gets better.
A little less than a month into a major water main replacement, workers are now at 38th Street fixing the portion of road near the Cady Marsh Ditch, Derek Snyder, engineer with Hammond-based Engineering firm NIES Engineering, said. The lane restrictions, which have brought Kennedy Avenue down one lane each direction on the east side of the road, will flip at the end of August and bring traffic down to one lane each way on the road’s west side.
Barring any weather nightmares, the project is expected to be substantially complete by Thanksgiving, Snyder said. And once the Cady Marsh section is complete, three lanes of traffic will be opened while work goes on, affecting traffic much less than now.
There’s no denying getting to point B from point A is inconvenient at best right now and will be worse once school starts, but the work will be worth it, Snyder said.
“It takes a lot of being patient, I know,” Snyder said. “But this construction will fix a lot of water main breaks the town has been having, especially south of Cady Marsh. You can see on the north side of the street of badly the road is deteriorating and how many patches the town has had to fix.”
South of Highway, to Jewett Street, a 16-inch water main pipe will be used to create a water main loop from the pump station to the water tower, which adds more reliability, Snyder said.
“This is the drinking water main we’re fixing, so it’ll also improve water quality,” he said.
Workers will be back out in the spring to finish any of the project’s loose ends, but it should be completed in full by June 2016, Snyder said.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.