LOWER MERION — During a public works committee meeting this month, Lower Merion officials outlined a list of roads throughout the township that will be part of its annual roto-milling and resurfacing program.
Paul McElhaney, director of public works for Lower Merion, outlined this year’s planned street paving.
“Every year, we put together a paving list of what we have proposed to do for the year, and this year, we’re back more in line with our traditional paving of about 200,000 square yards versus the 300,000 square yards that we did last year,” McElhaney said.
McElhaney described last year as a catch-up year when they had to do more streets due to the previous year’s utility work.
Township officials say they hope the asphalt cost will decrease this year.
“There is $1.5M budgeted in the CIP,” according to the staff memo to the commissioners on this year’s paving projects. “The Township will be receiving Liquid Fuels funding from the State in addition to contributions from the utilities for roadway restoration where underground infrastructure work was completed.”
When asked by commissioners if he could provide a schedule, McElhaney said not at this time.
“Until we have someone under contract, I will not be able to provide you with a schedule,” he said. “Our hope is to do as we did last year — to put the bid out early this year as we did last year so that we become the first priority for whoever wins the contract and that we can bring them in before school lets out like we did last year. It took a lot of coordination between my office staff, the team of Pennoni [Engineering] and the contractor to be able to get started before the schools let out. That allowed us to complete before Labor Day last year, so that is our goal this year. We’ll have to see if that works with the contractor’s plans and schedules.”
A link to the complete paving list for this year can be found at lowermerion.novusagenda.com/agendaintranet/CoverSheet.aspx?ItemID=7370&MeetingID=1426.
Originally Published: February 24, 2025 at 10:10 AM EST