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City aims to get South Main work started soon; bids expected this fall
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Bids on work to improve portions of South Main Street are expected to go out this fall, Hinesville City Council members learned.

Council member Vicky Nelson said she has gotten numerous calls on the condition of Main Street because of the manholes and potholes. City engineer Paul Simonton said he has put the work out to bid three times, the last such time in mid-August, but each time, the bidders wind up getting bigger jobs “I know it’s been hit and miss getting that done,” City Manager Kenneth Howard said. “We are actively working on that. We talk weekly about this project.”

One of the contractors won a bid at the Bryan County megasite and two of the contractors said they could not find a subcontractor to handle the pipework, Simonton said. He may break out the pipe work from the contract “We’ll have to break that one down in smaller bites,” he said.

Simonton said he expects to send the project out to bid in October, which would lead to work starting in early 2023.

Traffic control will be an issue, he said. Simonton lauded the company, AWP, that supervised traffic control when Martin Luther King Jr. Drive was repaved. “We’re going to be working on every inch of that roadway and trying to keep traffic moving,” he said.

That project will widen and improve South Main to Ralph Quarterman Drive, and a traffic circle will be installed there.

Simonton added a traffic circle is in the works for South Main Street and Hendry Street to replace the traffic signal. That effort is in the concept stage. Another traffic circle planned for Main Street and Ryon Avenue, but Simonton said that is “a ways off.”

The work currently being done at Main and Ryon is to replace concrete pipe.

Simonton said that improvements on South Main from Second Street to Gen. Screven Way will have to addressed separately. There are places with old pipe crossings that are bad, and Simonton said he will get with ESG to see if they have material to patch the road. He also will do an assessment on those crossings.

“I don’t imagine that one will take us a long time to do,” he said.

Another project in the works from the state Department of Transportation that will mill and overlay South Main from Airport Road down Highway 196, down Gen. Screven Way and through Fort Stewart all the way to the gate near Pembroke. That work is expected to start in January.

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