By Blake Haas
NORMAL – Thanks to a motor and fuel tax, three busy streets in Normal will get resurfaced paving the way for smoother driving.
Plans to kick off the resurfacing project of three busy streets in Normal will kick off as soon as the Illinois Department of Transportation gives the green light.
“We’ve got a number of streets and sections of streets that are planned to be resurfaced this year,” said Normal City Manager Pamela Reece. “Council has taken action each of the last two council meetings to approve some street resurfacing projects. The action that the council took on [Monday] night was to allocate motor fuel tax dollars toward a number of street resurfacing projects. The next step for those particular streets is to then seek IDOT approval once the plans are ready to go. Then after that, then we put the project out for bid. So we have to wait to receive the bids and awards a contract after that.”
Roads including College Avenue from Beech street to Blair Drive, Grandview Drive and Broadway Avenue from Vernon to Phoenix and Linden Street to Grandview Drive will all get a facelift thanks to $926,000 allocated from a motor and fuel tax.
“Then plans are being finalized now and we will get IDOT approval and we expect to begin the project in resurfacing later this summer,” added Reece. “Since it is July already we should be able to turn a bit around four to six weeks I assume and get the resurfacing project underway and typically street resurfacing projects run through October.”
The motor and fuel tax is a fund collected on tax collected on motor fuel through the state and is dispersed based on population. Since Normal has a population of almost 53,000 people, they received $926,000.
“This was a very unusual year and we have a number of areas of roadways that we are trying to improve,” added Reece. “From a drivers perspective is the type of street, and sometimes we have concrete streets and sometimes we have asphalt streets. For asphalt streets that ends up being a new asphalt surface. For asphalt streets the end result is that you are driving on a new asphalt pavement.”
Blake Haas can be reached at [email protected].
