With Lisle trustees expected to approve a temporary variance of the village’s construction ordinance, the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority will begin advertising for bids Thursday for the maintenance work needed on four of its overpass bridges in the village.
“We aren’t necessarily looking for the lowest-bidding contractor, but for [one] who can get the job completed the quickest,” said Mark Kazich, a senior project engineer with the tollway.
The work is scheduled from April 1 to Nov. 30 and will be conducted 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But that timetable requires a variance from a Lisle ordinance that usually restricts construction in the village to from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Mondays to Saturdays and 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sundays.
The Village Board is expected to approve the variance at its Jan. 15 meeting. The tollway will not open the bids received until the end of the month, officials said.
The bridges slated for repair are on the East-West Tollway over Illinois Highway 53, the east branch of the DuPage River, Yackley Avenue and Warrenville Road.
The majority of the work will be completed overnight and weekends in order for the tollway to keep the six-lane toll road open as much as possible during peak commuting times.
The work is to be completed in stages, progressing from the far-outside lanes to the middle lanes to the inside lanes. The fourth stage will address any work needed on medians and shoulders.
The agency’s goal is to have the same lane closed at each of the bridges at the same time, said Joelle McGinnis, a tollway spokeswoman.
The more extensive projects are at Yackley Avenue and Warrenville Road, where a 40-foot-wide section will be removed and replaced. For the work at Illinois 53 and the DuPage River, the agency will be rehabbing the concrete surface and making any necessary repairs to the support structure.
The work doesn’t include any widening of the road, but the repairs will allow for a new lane to be added onto the bridge, if and when the tollway is widened, said Kazich.
The bridgework is part of the $6.3 million the tollway has estimated it will cost to improve the toll road from Meyers Road in Lombard to Mill Street in Naperville.
The work on the Illinois 53 and DuPage River bridges are expected to last 15 years, and the new decks at Yackley Avenue and Warrenville Road are expected to last 20 years, officials said.
