Road report: Basin Avenue paving complete

It may have taken nearly nine months, but a highly trafficked, 1.2-mile section of Basin Avenue is finally paved with new asphalt-concrete atop a proper base and motorists can now enjoy a smooth ride on the completely redone roadway. The striping on the street is not yet in place but county road crews are expected to finish this in the near future.

“The big question was, how come it’s taking so long for us to get this done?” Nye County Public Works Director Tom Bolling told the Nye County Commission this month.

The answer, he said, really came down to a couple of key factors.

First and foremost, the project called for excavation of tens-of-thousands of cubic yards of earth beneath the road, which was necessary in order to provide a proper base for the street. “It takes a while to move 49,000 cubic yards of material,” he stated, adding that road crews were only able to do the excavation in 1,000-foot sections.

Aside from the physical labor required on site, county road crews also had to try to balance their workload to accommodate response to the recent flooding and other roadway issues, which caused delays, too.

As to why his department had decided to perform the excavation and prep work in-house, Bolling said this was primarily to see how much money could be saved in the process, which turned out to be quite a lot.

He reported that if the excavation and prep work had been contracted out, it would have resulted in change orders due to the need to excavate deeper in some sections than originally expected.

“The change order for that, this would have been a $2.1 million dollar excavation and put-back job,” Bolling stated. “As of right now, we are at $750,000 in cost, and that includes all materials. We do have a couple of invoices that we’re expecting so we figure our top-out cost will be $850,000 to $950,000 after we get done striping it and everything. A significant savings for the citizens of Nye County.”

A savings of more than $1 million may have been realized but, as Bolling noted, the upshot was that the project did tie up most of road department for months.

On the specs of the project, Bolling explained that Basin Avenue had been widened to 37 feet and repaved from where it fronts Petrack Park down to Blagg Road. This allowed for the incorporation of bike lanes along the road.

At the corner of Basin Avenue and Dahlia Street, which is used as an access point for many businesses in the area, the project called for an entire redesign of the intersection, including curbing, gutters and sidewalks.

“We tore out all of the asphalt from the edge of the pavement on the south side to the fence at the park and we replaced all of that asphalt and regraded that, regraded flow lines in there so that water will convey through there a lot better than it has in the past,” Bolling stated. “With those designs we had done, we were able to fit bike lanes, travel lanes and a center turn lane (at Dahlia Street). We also have, for the people parking at a 45-degree angle along the park’s fence line, a back-out lane so they don’t have to back out directly into traffic as they used to do. So it’s much safer for everybody.”

Bolling also detailed that future plans for the area include the installation of a formal crosswalk from Dahlia Street to Petrack Park, with flashing yellow notification lights and nighttime lighting as well.

Contact reporter Robin Hebrock at rhebrock@pvtimes.com