After months of local wrangling over projects and more months of waiting for federal approvals, bids will be opened today on 40 Northwest Indiana stimulus projects worth more than $11 million.
A combination of factors has delayed the awarding of contracts for Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission projects, including a lack of engineering for some and the painstaking federal approval process, according to NIRPC planner Gary Evers.
"It was a little rough getting going, but I think we are almost there," Evers told NIRPC's Transportation Policy Committee on Tuesday.
In April, NIRPC submitted a list of about 70 stimulus road and transportation projects totalling $20.3 million to the Indiana Department of Transportation. But it wasn't until October that bids were opened on the first two projects and only eight more were done in November.
The good news is that contractors have bid 20 percent to 30 percent less than engineers' estimates on the NIRPC projects already let for bid, meaning there should be money left to do about seven additional projects included on a contingency list, Evers said.
The 40 NIRPC projects are among 84 projects statewide that will have bids opened at INDOT headquarters in Indianapolis today, according to INDOT spokesman Wil Wingfield. That is the largest number of bid openings on any single day so far this year, Wingfield said.
The massive bid opening at INDOT comes one day after President Barack Obama said he wants to use leftover money from the bank bailout for further job-creating stimulus projects, including $50 billion on roads, bridges, aviation and water projects. That money would be in addition to the money included in the original American Reinvestment and Recovery Act passed by Congress in February.
So far, INDOT has awarded contracts for $573 million in projects out of the $658 million it was allocated for transportation stimulus projects, Wingfield said.
"The biggest emphasis for us is to put as many people to work as possible with this money, in order to follow the intent of the Act," Wingfield said.
In all, $112 million in federal stimulus funds have been set aside for projects designated by metropolitan planning groups across Indiana, including NIRPC.
NIRPC projects mainly consist of repaving local roads, although lighting, sidewalks and drainage are also on the list.
Evers credited INDOT with almost "magical" flexibility over the last six months, allowing NIRPC to add and subtract projects from the list as communities found some projects would not be doable and others would.
Contingency projects that could get the green light if bids come in low on Wednesday are preventive maintenance and repaving projects in St. John, Gary and Portage as well as modernizing traffic signals in Valparaiso.
