avenue reconstruction i'm beth and i work for ramsey county public works and i'm the project manager for this project we're going to go through a short presentation just to tell you the basic information on the project so we're not exactly sure when this roadway was built because back when they build roadways like this kind of a volved over time potentially with just putting oil on dirt and then you know paving over it as time went on we expect to find some interesting stuff potentially underneath the pavement it was overlaid in two thousand and two and i think most of you are probably aware it's not in the best shape so we're thinking that's not a good use of money to  construct it so in terms of the type of improvements we're looking at we're looking at reconstructing the roadway in its entirety so basically starting from the property owner side of the sidewalk and moving in towards the street and working over to the other property owner side of the other side walk so that roadway reconstruction which includes everything in between like i said drainage improvements will be replacing the storm sewer that's out there today and all of the curb some utility improvements will do our in there water sanitary sewer and some private utility improvements and then also adding some lighting so we'll talk more about each of those categories of improvements here's a typical section it's actually the way the roadway looks today and it's actually what we're proposing to reconstruct the roadway with so we're just going to maintain what's out there which is one lane of traffic  each direction and then on street parking on both sides of the street so the curbs will generally stay where they are today so there's a lot of reasons why we're proposing to maintain the existing typical section the beautiful trees that are out there number of close to two hundred we get past the existing curb towards those trees in the boulevard will be you know potentially damaging the root structure and we don't want to do that so we are a goal of our project is to minimize any impact to trees we were interested in maintaining the parking since it is a mixed bag of land  out there both residential and commercial so we're looking at keeping the parking generally that is there today and we want to balance both the roadway use and the pedestrian environment of the cord or since it is you know a quarter people walk down to get from point a to b along the corridor in order to do what we want to do with putting the curbs back where they are today we need a variance this roadway is designated as a county state highway which means we get tax dollars to maintain and repair the roadway and with those tax dollars there's requirements for minimum design standards and for a roadway with a lot of traffic on it like randolph which the classification of a lot of traffic in this case is over ten thousand vehicles per day we are supposed to maintain a minimum ten foot parking lane we actually are proposing a nine foot which is really what's out there today even though you don't see the parking lane striped we have eleven feet in in the travel lane and nine feet in the parking lane so in order to maintain that we have to just get a variance of one foot on that parking lane so in addition to those reasons to maintain the section obviously there's other reasons where widening you know becomes problematic and that is due to the narrow roadway with excuse me the narrow right of way with we only have about sixty six to eighty feet to work with and if we get outside that right of way with we're you know into impacts pretty quickly since the corridor is built up right on the outside of the right of way so there are a couple exceptions to where we wouldn't be maintaining the existing curb with and one of those is that hamlin avenue where proposing actually to widen that just a little bit i think it's in the or on the order of four feet or so so a couple feet either side in order to add left turn lanes so we want your feedback on that obviously there's heavy left turning movement at hamlin but the tradeoff for adding left turn lanes in each direction would be losing parking on one side so we were pushing actually proposing to push the the roadway or the traffic little bit to the north so we would be maintaining the bus stop on the south side and then pushing traffic and getting in that extra lane in order to add left turn lanes and if that something that sounds like everyone is on board with we would go ahead and make the changes necessary to the traffic signal to the other exception is like saying to ave i'm expecting to hear quite a bit about legs into an avenue tonight because it is a really busy intersection so we'd like to hear you know what you guys are experiencing out there knowing that as soon we step outside the right away we have some pretty significant impacts i actually am both east and west side of the intersection with homes pretty close to the right of way trader joe's infrastructure that was recently put in pretty close to the right of way and then just even on the southwest side the large retaining walls and then the huge the big hill that the apartment building is on so we're looking at different possibilities there nothing's really decided on right now but we're going to look at that from a standpoint of what's the benefit versus the cost of certain improvements so i mentioned we'd be doing drainage improvements while we reconstruct the road and here's a picture showing why we might need to replace the curb along the whole chord or we're going to do that and then we're going to replace all of the storm sewer that was put in at different times some more recent than others but some going back to like the seventies so we would be redesigning the storm sewer to meet those stated standards that i mentioned and we'd also need to meet infiltration requirements set by the watershed district so those can be in the form of rain gardens underground detention facilities we have a sleep have not a lot of room to work with so we're thinking that it would likely be underground and those are just storm water features you probably wouldn't even know where there but we do have to deal with meeting those requirements and then i mentioned utility improvements the water main that's under randolph is maintained by st paul regional water services and we've met with them to talk about the infrastructure they have in the improvements that they'd like to take care of while we're in  there there's some mean crossings on side streets it's four different side streets that have means crossing randolph and they would go ahead and replace those areas within the project limits they want to replace all the fire hydrants within the corridor and then there's about eighty six lead services that they're required to replace when we're roadway work is done which the county likes because we don't want to have to go into our new roadway after the project is finished and those lead services will have some tree impact so we've noted those areas on the layout see some access through trees where we've sweep located the services and we think that they're going to be too close to the trees to save the tree and i will mention at this time too there's other axes on the layout that represent trees that the forest or for the city of st paul have deemed trees that are not healthy so i think there's a handful of those but for the most part we're trying to like i mentioned maintain the trees that are out there in good shape and then there's always private utility work to be done with roadway projects we've got excel gas and electric century link has a few lines within the project limits and x finity so we'll be doing a lot of that work concurrent with the project and potentially some of it ahead of the  project sanitary sewer improvements a lot of the century sewer is very old so we'll be rebuilding some of the top sections of the manholes for sanitary sewer that tend to fall apart when you get into them when you're rebuilding the road in your sub cutting to get in the sand and the rock beneath the pavement so will be revealed in those sections are in place in castings it's to be determined but the city has you know decided to take a look at the condition of the sanitary sewer in the probably be lining a lot of it which is a trench list technology but they'll be doing that in some areas to be determined and then the opportunity presents itself to replace some problematic services within the right of way those are actually owned by the property owner so it would be at the owners request an expense that that section of their service be replaced with the project and obviously there's an advantage with having our contractors out there capable of doing the work and doing it on a larger scale so the city allows that with their projects and we're going to do the same with the county's project so i have some more information about that if you'd like to talk to somebody about potentially doing that so just a little bit more information about sanitary services you can see just a typical section here of if you cut the roadway and you are looking at you know from center line of the roadway to your home what that service looks like  sanitary usually runs down the middle of the street which is largely the case on this project so you can see that the section of the service that we're talking about is the one that connects at the main in the middle of the street and goes to the property owner's property line or the end of the right of way and then i mentioned lantern style lighting this is a picture of the city's typical lantern style lighting that they've been adding in other locations around the city so the lighting would look something like this and we don't have those locations of the lights proposed on the layout that you see in the back of the room but it's generally will be staggered sort of be on both sides of the street at some spacing interval you know between the trees that exist out there today so the funding for the project is those state aid funds that i mentioned from the roadway being designated as a cosat that's where the bulk of the money will come from in order to do the project and then some other project money will come from the city in the form of i guess local funds that they have but also in the form of city assessments for roadway and lighting and the city can answer more questions about how that works and lobby sleep have more information at a future open house when we've gotten further into the actual design of the project and then we also were able to receive some cooperate of agreement funding from the state and that's specifically for pedestrian prove that i thirty five e where the ramps intersect with rand so the schedule for the project we're really right now in the preliminary design phase so we've gathered a bunch of information in order to present this information to today and to create the lay out which is in the back of the room the variance process is probably the next big step for us we need to submit that information to mend by the first of december and then the committee which is made up of some professionals in the community like city engineers and county engineers they'll be reviewing that request at a december nineteenth meeting i believe and we'll get the answer right there whether they grant the variance and that would be kind of the go ahead in our minds to get going on final design because we have a lot of details to work out with the one mile roadway project since we will be looking at beginning construction in the spring of two thousand and fifteen and i mentioned that second open house were expecting to come back to the public in the summer potentially the spring of next year w more information that we don't have right now like construction phasing and how are going to stage the project right now it's i'd say it's likely that we'd be looking at a two year construction duration just because it would be hard to get it all done in one minnesota construction season but that's still to be determined so like i said we're going to be around here and can answer any specific questions you have about your home but if you have a question you think the whole group might want to hear the answer to we can go through some of those  o with the woman back there first and then i'll catch you  you know the sanitary for example the tops of those sanitary manholes they really do start to fall apart when you get in there and you're digging down several feet to rebuild or subgrade but we don't touch the bottom of those manholes because they're just fine we don't get down that far in the city is going to be televising the sanitary sewer to see whether it needs to be lined and they've been doing that in the lot other areas where the sewers as old as it is here so they won't do that lining unless that's necessary concern that is something we're concerned about too because i know you can't afford for an entire summer two summers to not be able to get to the businesses so that's something i talked to steve about in that we're going to have to figure out the details because there's opportunities to take maybe a few blocks at a time and reconstruct those and put requirements on the contractor when they have to have those done so we're certainly not going to let the contractor rip up several blocks at a time and just leave it on and on all summer so we'll have  interim completion dates for the contractor worry has to have certain blocks done within a certain time frame and even within those blocks that he's working on say it's three blocks at a time well look at whether we can have you know the cross streets passable during construction so that's all depends kind of on like the intersections are kind of the busy areas with private utilities and that sometimes where the bigger storm sewer structures are so we'll look at doing that you know wherever we possibly can and then with respect to your concern about safety you know we do have the crash history along the corridor and we did take a look at that and we are keeping that as a consideration for one or doing things like asking for a variance and when we're doing things like making sure that we maintain a boulevard with that keeps people walking along randolph you know not right on top of the roadway so we are thinking about those types of things during design things are adding up all the signals audible our yeah that's kind of what we're thinking would be more friendly to people that drive through the area and drive through the area but definitely for people who live on the corner is to not rip up the whole road for two years so we are looking at phasing and in my previous experience usually that would first be dictated from a drainage standpoint just because you need to make sure that you've got somewhere for the water to go while you're doing construction but we would take other things into consideration like b feel like that's a good use of money on an overlay because we did it in two thousand and two and it's really needing it again and so i'm just explaining i guess our standpoint you know we were willing to work with you guys to minimize first of all this is the first open house you're right so we're here to hear what you have to say we appreciate you coming we're going to get the variance to say can we make the roadway if we reconstruct it can we keep it the same with that doesn't really make any decision about the project with respect to schedule or mill an overlay versus reconstruct it just says if we can reconstruct it you know in the same place it is today then we'll get the go ahead do that if we don't get the variance then maybe we will reconsider the scope because i personally don't have an appetite for ripping down two hundred trees to widen the road to whole feet to get standards i mean that's something we would have to take a step back and say is this worth doing but to finish you know what i was saying about mill and overlay versus reconstruction the city spent a lot of money the last several years you know fixing potholes on this road and a lot of other roads frankly that are county roads and city roads so we're looking at the best investment for our money which we believe is to reconstruct the roadway and to do the improvements that are necessary while they're in there wherein they're not improvements that are needed but to do the work that should be policy process will over the weekend we haven't done very detailed design at all on meeting those watershed district requirements they're not even the quarter of a percent probably of the project i mean they're a very small portion of the actual underground storage to meet those requirements storm sewer lines that have to do the math on what storm sewer will cost relative to the total project cost but the cost of the project right now is in the transportation prove meant program of the counties at about seven million dollars which is for reconstructing you know forty feet of pavement for over a mile so we feel we have other options well it's either reconstruct or it's major maintenance so i mean those are options and you're right you don't get state aid funds if you don't i mean there's reconditioning projects there's standards for those projects i'm not as familiar with but you're right you know we would stated funds if we reconstruct the roadway we'd probably use you know gas tax dollars if we milled and overlaid the road we so coming from the standpoint of saying we don't want to throw more money at milling and overlaying the road because it's not lasting as long as we'd like to see it last and we don't feel like that is throwing good money after good i would have to do the math for you because i don't know off the top of my head what it would cost to do mill really because one of the challenges we have is what do we have out there for payment section today like i said it's been mild and overlaid over time and you know we have curves so whatever we mill we need to overlay the same amount otherwise were you rush hour and i also want to get back on the bus is my house also shakes also the buses repeatedly run over the curbs so i'm thinking about the cost benefit again because estimate just based on you know history of similar projects and what contractors are bidding for certain items and obviously we have a contingency on that at this time since we don't know exactly the details of the design so i you know we do the best we can with costs estimating but i do know that the city is going to set their assessment with you know with maybe other city projects in mind and maybe information about sustainability of assessments for the types of homes along their project but our project costs will not directly affect the city's assessment rate know when it was built because it has been mill is been overlaid and overlaid in all relate so many times we don't have really good information on what the sub grade is in that part of the problem so the reconstruction would replace all of the subgrade soils which are part of the avenue only those funds that you're referring to are usually federal funds sometimes state funds which actually the county has given back federal funds before because it wasn't a good use of money so i mean we have made that decision within the last two years