PORT ANGELES — Clallam County will add $99,000 to a $1.04 million contract with David Evans and Associates to design the $9.4 million Deer Park Road underpass at U.S. Highway 101 if county commissioners approve a recommendation from the road department.
The three commissioners will consider approving a contract supplement with the Bellevue design consultant next week, and did not object when it was discussed in a work session Tuesday.
Clallam County is building a two-lane road with a 10-foot-wide pedestrian and bicycle path under U.S. Highway 101 west of Deer Park Cinema to eliminate left turns onto the four-lane highway from Deer Park Road.
Motorists will use the underpass rather than turning left onto the highway from Deer Park Road or Buchanan Drive at the eastern side of the Morse Creek S-curve.
The contract supplement covers added design features, design modifications and new costs associated with a state review of the project’s plans and specifications.
“It’s kind of reimbursing them for extra work they’ve already done, so there’s a little bit of that in there, too,” Clallam County Transportation Program Manager Rich James said.
Although the supplement extends the consultant’s completion date to Dec. 31, 2013, it will not delay the project.
Construction is still planned for next year.
“We are getting closer,” County Engineer Ross Tyler told commissioners Tuesday. “We’re starting to close the last deals on right of way.”
James said the project will go out to bid this fall. The time line will be “up to the contractor at that point,” but 2013 remains the target, James said.
About 80 percent of the project cost comes from federal sources. The rest comes from county real estate excise tax collections. The project has been approved in Clallam County’s six-year Transportation Improvement Program.
Highway 101 will retain its present alignment and grade.
During construction, however, highway traffic will be shifted to the south, where a gravel pit now exists, to allow crews to build the 50-foot-wide underpass.
Once the project is finished, anyone heading west from Deer Park Road will loop around the west side of Deer Park Cinemas, travel under the highway and merge with westbound traffic from a new acceleration lane from Buchanan Drive.
Motorists turning east from Buchanan Drive will instead use the underpass to connect to Deer Park Road and an acceleration lane there.
The Deer Park underpass project will overlap with the state Department of Transportation’s two-year project to widen U.S. 101 between Kitchen-Dick and Shore roads between Port Angeles and Sequim.
Neither project will require a highway closure.
Transportation officials have said the $90 widening project will begin this winter with construction of a new bridge over McDonald Creek.
Widening of the 3.5-mile, two-lane stretch of highway is scheduled to be finished in October 2014.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5072, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.