Indiana 26 work set to begin

Drivers who regularly travel Indiana 26 on the west side of Jay County have a couple of days to find a new route.
Work is scheduled to begin Wednesday on paving Indiana 26 between its intersection with Indiana 67 near Jay County High School and Indiana 1. The road will close about 8 a.m. that day and is expected to remain closed for at least six months.
“(It’ll be open) for local access only after that point,” said Milestone Construction project manager John Sweet, adding that the target completion day is Nov. 11.
The official Indiana Department of Transportation detour calls for using Indiana 1 and Indiana 67 to bypass the construction.
The original start date had been set for April 25 but was pushed back mostly because of weather.
The major parts of the $8.2 million project include an improved roadway — some areas will be lifted and repaved while others will be completely reconstructed — a new bridge over Brooks Creek about a half-mile east of the intersection with Indiana 1 and removal of the jogs in the road at county road 300 West.
The work will begin at Indiana 1 on the west side of the county, Sweet said Friday. The bridge construction alone is expected to take two months, he added.
In conjunction with the road project, Ohio Valley Gas is moving one of its pipelines that would have been too close to the new roadway. The first sections of new pipe — about 600 feet just east of county road 500 West — were put in place Wednesday.
“They are currently moving that,” said Sweet, “and their expected completion date is Aug. 15.”
In addition to paving, Indiana 26 will be widened. When complete, it will feature 11-foot wide lanes instead of those that are currently between 8 and 9 feet.
“It’s too narrow. It’s been too narrow,” said Jay County engineer Dan Watson. “It’s been let go for the last 20 years. It was always scheduled for reconstruction, so nobody ever did anything to it. It kept getting pushed back and pushed back and deteriorating worse and worse.”
The bridge over Brooks Creek will be rebuilt, and new drainage structures will be installed. Existing metal culverts will be replaced with concrete, and ditches and drains will be added.
To eliminate the 90-degree turns at county road 300 west, the new section of Indiana 26 will begin to curve to the north about a half-mile west of county road 200 West. It will connect with the northern portion of Indiana 26 about a quarter mile west of county road 300 West, which will no longer intersect with Indiana 26. Parts of county road 300 West and Indiana 26 will be removed.
“The accident situation there, especially at the north turn, had been awful,” said Watson. “That’s probably one of our highest-accident intersections in the county. …
“The new alignment is going to make that 100 percent better.”
“The elimination of the 90-degree angle was more of a safety target,” agreed Nathan Riggs, public information director for INDOT’s east central district. “As a high-speed, high traffic volume state highway, that’s just not a modern, safe design. So in rebuilding the roadway it just made sense to modernize and improve the safety of that curvature.”
The curved section of road that currently connects Indiana 26 and county road 200 West near Jay County High School will also be removed. The intersection of 200 West and Indiana 26 will remain open as much as possible during construction, but will likely be closed for about two months this summer.
The project has been under discussion for about 20 years, and the state purchased more than 7 miles of right of way in 2009 to allow for the elimination of the turns at county road 300 West. That same year, Indiana 26 was repaved from Hartford City to Indiana 1.
Improving the road from Indiana 1 to Indiana 67 remained on INDOT’s project list, but didn’t quite make it to the top until this year.
“We want to keep all of our roads and bridges in as good of condition as possible,” said Riggs. “We try to target the projects that need it the most.”
He noted that the work was originally expected to be a two-year job, but that INDOT and utility companies were able to work together to tighten that timeline.