The City of Plymouth is preparing to move the process forward on the community’s Safe Routes to School project.
The program is federally sponsored and is intended to provide safe walking or biking access to and from school for area children. In addition to safety, the 2005 program was also partly designed to combat childhood obesity.
Preliminary engineering for SRTS is already underway, but Plymouth City Engineer Rick Gaul says the state of Indiana expects a separate contract for the next portion.
“INDOT suggests that you do all of your preliminary engineering under one contract and do your construction engineering under a second contract,” says Gaul. “What that does is your [preliminary] engineering is typically a lump sum and it’s based on: you’ve got this done, this done, and this done. When you go to construction engineering, it’s based more on an hourly basis of what you pay.”
The Indiana Department of Transportation oversees some of the work and will reimburse the City of Plymouth once costs have been gathered and submitted as a claim.
As is typical with INDOT contracts, Gaul says there are only a few changes Plymouth can make to the contract with the engineering firm should they see fit. The goal moving forward is to enter into contract negotiations between the City and engineers for the construction phase.
The Plymouth Board of Works will need to approve the contract prior to starting work.
