The Henderson Fiscal Court approved two contracts Tuesday as part of the federal Safe Streets For All grant that will go toward improving county roads.
The first contract is for Bacon Farmer Workman Engineering to conduct a study of all the road signs on county roads, said County Engineer Nick Stallings, who researched and wrote the grant for the federal grant and is acting as liaison on the project.
The road sign study contract, with BFW, is for $195,249. As part of this study, BFW will record all the signs currently in place in the county and locations where additional signs should be placed, Stallings said.
All signs will be replaced and locations that don’t have necessary signs will get them, Stallings said. In all, he estimated that 3,500 new signs will be put in place by the time the entire project is complete.
The road sign study will take about six months to complete, Stallings said.
The second contract awarded Tuesday involves a study that will look at the areas on county roads where crashes occur frequently or spots on those roads that have similar features to other areas where crashes occur frequently, Stallings said.
This contract is for $222,000 and goes to Palmer Engineering.
Once those areas are identified, the second part will include fixing the roads to improve safety. That will include widening roads, adding banking to help drivers stay on the roads, widening of culverts, pushing ditches back, removing trees, and in some places, moving utility poles away from the road, Stallings said.
The total Safe Streets For All project must be completed by 2029, Stallings said.
The complete project will cost $4.2 million. Of that, the federal funding is $3.3 million, the state will provide $800,000 and the county is putting in $24,000, according to a previous Hendersonian article.
