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Great Streets on St. Paul + Construction Season Update

As originally shared on Front Porch Forum, January 7, 2019

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We are excited to update you on the conclusion of a productive construction season and offer next steps on our Great Streets project on St. Paul Street. We have been extremely grateful for your patience and partnership during this exciting period of reinvestment in Burlington. You can see more about these and other projects at https://www.burlingtonvt.gov/construction or https://www.burlingtonvt.gov/DPW/Reinvestment.

**2018 CONSTRUCTION SEASON** 
This was the second year of implementing the Sustainable Infrastructure Plan - the city's plan to rebuild our core infrastructure and make it more resilient. At the end of this construction season, which spanned parts or all of 9 months from when asphalt plants opened to when they closed, our crews and contractors:

- Paved over 7 miles of roads, including major arteries such as a long segment of North Ave, nearly all of Colchester Ave, and a long segment of Pine St. 
- Tripled past annual reconstruction of sidewalks by rebuilding nearly 3 miles. 
- Added 2 pedestrian signals at different intersections and installed 24 curb extensions at 9 intersections to shorten crossing times for pedestrians. 
- Increased the bike lane network by 23%. 
- Rehabilitated over 3 miles of water mains, which is a rate unseen in this city's memory. This will provide better structural integrity, decrease the chance of water main breaks on these streets, and increase fire flows where pipes were upsized. 
- Continued a second year of preventative maintenance, which included crack-sealing miles of streets and "sidewalk cutting" dozens of segments of raised sidewalk slabs.

This coming year will mark another important year of rebuilding infrastructure and we will be detailing this next round of investments soon. Following is an update on our related Great Streets project on St. Paul.

**GREAT STREETS ON ST. PAUL** 
The Great Streets Initiative is a culmination of many years of planning and project development to aid in building a sustainable and connected downtown streetscape. The process began with the public vote in March of 2015 to use the City's downtown TIF district to make new investments in the downtown's public infrastructure and to ensure that Burlington continues to have a downtown that is a vibrant, walkable, and sustainable urban center. On August 13, 2018, City Council approved the contract to begin work on St. Paul Street between Main and Maple. On St. Paul, our crews and contractors are working to underground overhead utilities, reconstruct sidewalks, and repave the road, as well as to install granite curbs, stormwater gardens, additional drainage, and pervious pavers.

During this first phase of the project our crews have added extensive stormwater infrastructure, paved a base-course on the northern block, and installed ductbanks for electrical and communication utilities, and soon will begin adding soil cells to support healthy tree growth and removing utility poles. Our contractor will begin re-opening the street on Monday, January 7 for southbound traffic, followed by two way traffic in the early part of February. Three-hour free parking will be available on segments of the street from 9AM-6PM. Work may continue at the King and Maple intersections. Businesses continue to be open, please stop by!

**NEXT STEPS FOR ST. PAUL** 
Our contractor will resume work in early spring, and at this time re-close the road to through traffic. In this phase of work, our contractor will build sidewalks and granite curbing, and install rain gardens, planters, benches, bike racks, and paver crosswalks. Extensive road sub-base rebuilding will occur on the southern block of St. Paul and on segments of King and Maple. These side street traffic patterns will change throughout construction.

Resilient, reliable infrastructure will keep Burlington a world-class city to live, work and do business in. We thank you for your help in keeping this a great place to live. If you have any questions on these projects, please reach out to Public Works' Public Information Manager Robert Goulding at RGoulding@burlingtonvt.gov or 802-540-0846.

Press Release Date: 
01/07/2019
City Department: 
Public Works Department