Updated after deadline
Road closure delayed until next week
Closure of US-56/77/K-150 for construction of a roundabout has been delayed until next week, Mervin Lare of KDOT said Wednesday.
“We had some contractor issues and some utility issues that popped up, so we won’t be closing the road until next week,” he said.
Lare said the issues are “well taken care of,” and the project definitely would begin in “a few days, unless something changes.”
The project was slated to begin Thursday and continue into mid-August. Lare said KDOT still hoped to complete the project by that time, before students go back to school in the fall.
Original article, with updates
US-56 between US-56/77/K-150 and K-256 will be closed beginning next week to allow construction of a roundabout at the US-56/77/K-150 junction.
The project is scheduled for completion Aug. 21. US-56 traffic will detour through Marion on K-256.
“KDOT is certainly confident that K-256 can handle the increase in traffic,” said Mervin Lare of KDOT’s Marion office.
In 2014, average daily traffic on US-56 near US-56/77/K-150 junction was 2,220 vehicles. K-256 carried an average of just 910 cars per day between Marion and US-77. It could be seeing the sum of both roads’ traffic during the construction.
Businesses located off US-56 still will be accessible. The highway will be open to local traffic away from where the roundabout will be built.
K-150 also will be detoured, but Joe Palic of Marion KDOT said it’s unknown when that detour will begin. K-150 traffic from US-56/77 to US-50 will detour south to Florence. It’s the same detour used when K-150 was reconstructed in 2002.
The average daily volume of traffic on that stretch of K-150 ranges from 1,280 near US-50 to 1,540 near US-56/77. All that traffic will be detoured to Florence, which sees about 2,500 vehicles on US-50 and 2,020 on US-77 north to US-56/77.
Palic said many employees of the new roundabout’s contractor, Cornejo and Sons, also worked on the Florence roundabout with Lafarge Construction. Palic said the same parent company owns both firms.
“So the workers should be pretty familiar with the area,” he said.