At their monthly meeting on June 16 the McLean County Board acted on $730,000 for transportation projects. One project was awarded. It was for $360,000 to reconstruct Meiners II Bridge on 1700 North Rd. in Anchor Township. The second is a $366 thousand project to repave County Highway 24 (Townline Rd.) from Tazewell County to Illinois Route 122 in Allin Township. The board authorized raising the weight limit for that road so the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) could move forward with letting the project.
The Meiners II bridge is a double-barrel concrete box culvert. HJ Eppel & Co. of Pontiac, IL won the bid over Stark Excavating by $95,200. Eppel has done hot mix and parking lot work for the county in the past. It has been a few years since they have done culvert work for the county but according to McLean County Engineer Jerry Stokes, “It’s good to have them back.”
Reconstruction of this box culvert is necessary due to deteriorating concrete walls on the culvert detected as part of the county’s bridge inspection project. Eighty percent of the funding is from the state. Ten percent is from the county and another ten percent is paid by Anchor Township.
Townline Road. from Tazewell County to Illinois 122 is a length of four miles.
McLean County Transportation Committee Chair Jim Soeldner describes the road as “the extension of Route 9. Route 9 actually jogs when you get over there by Stanford (leaving you on Route 122 if you go straight). But it’s Townline Rd. that runs all the way from Route 122 (if you go straight when it jogs) all the way over to the Route I-155 that comes all the way up from Lincoln to Pekin.”
Tazewell county is also improving their section of Townline Road from the McLean County line to I-155.
In addition to being repaved the strength of the road will be increased so that it can support 80 thousand pound loads and it will be rated as a Class II Truck Route. Safety Shoulders will also be installed.
According to Stokes existing gravel shoulders will be replaced with “hot mix shoulders with rumble strips. They are called Safety shoulders (because their purpose is) to prevent run off the road accidents.” The funding source is Federal Surface Transportation Rural Funds from IDOT.
Townline Road was last resurfaced in 1996 so the county got a long 26-year life out of that asphalt.
According to Stokes, “We did a little pavement preservation about 12 years ago called micro-surfacing to help prolong it. Micro-surfacing is a pavement preservation where it’s a cement and aggregate sand that we put down in two passes over the asphalt that was put down 15 years prior. It prevents the water from penetrating in the pavement and we try to get five to seven more years out of the design.”
In this case the county got another 12 years out of the pavement with its preservation project.
Stokes says the county resurfaces 10 to 12 miles of the 366 miles the county maintains each year.
At 11 miles per year that would indicate a 33 year cycle.
While this is not the full picture and is a conservative estimate, given the county got 26 years out of Townline Road, it’s not beyond the pail. Based on that the county highway program looks like it may be sustainable.
According to Soeldner, Stokes is “an asset to the county.”
The county highway system is a testament to that.
