The temperature finally rose high enough and remained steady long enough for the city of Arnold to put the final touches on improvements at the intersection of Jeffco Boulevard and Tenbrook Road.
On Wednesday (April 1), crews painted the stripes for the new lanes on Tenbrook Road and the Fox schools campus entrance off Jeffco Boulevard, Public Works Director Judy Wagner said.
After the striping was completed, new traffic signals at the intersection were turned on and tested, and everything was working Thursday (April 2). That left just a little more work for Arnold Public Works employees to finish, and all of it is expected to be complete today (April 3), Wagner said.
“The weather has cooperated this week, thank goodness. It has been just more than three months to get the right temperature to stripe the new lanes,” she said. “The final approval from (the Missouri Department of Transportation) should come next week.”
Road work on the Fox campus side of the intersection was completed in August, and construction on the Tenbrook Road side of the intersection started in October. The city installed the new traffic signals near the end of December, but crews couldn’t finish the project as temperatures fell too low to allow workers to paint stripes for the new lanes.
The improvements to the intersection include a dedicated left-turn lane from the Fox schools campus onto Jeffco, as well as a left-turn lane from Tenbrook Road onto Jeffco. Both left-turn lanes will have an arrow traffic signal.
Other improvements include a through lane and a right-turn lane onto Jeffco from both sides of the intersection, and the entrances from the Fox campus and Tenbrook Road onto Jeffco were lined up, City Administrator Bryan Richison said.
The project included a 200-foot extension to the right-turn lane on the Fox campus to help alleviate congestion there. Crosswalks were improved, including the addition of traffic lights with buttons and a countdown to indicate how much time walkers have to cross the intersection. The crosswalks were built to Americans with Disabilities Act standards, with ramps and markings, Richison said.
He said the project began in 2013, adding, “it has been a difficult project from the start.”
Wagner said the final cost for the project will be about $905,000.
Most of the funding for the work is being covered by a federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality grant approved by the East-West Gateway Council of Governments. Wagner said the grant will be for an estimated $633,500, and Arnold will pay the remaining $271,500.