Travelers up and down Industrial Park Road may have noticed aslight delay and some heavy machinery. Crews are working to repairthe rutted street as part of a city and county project.

The road renovations are costing roughly $520,000.

However, 80 percent of the expense is being covered by federalhighway funds. The city and county are splitting the remaining 20percent. The city agreed to pay half up to $100,000 through the useof their general funds and the county is using State Aid funds topay its share of the project costs.

“This is a project that just about everybody in the county isgoing to benefit from,” said Lincoln Chancery Clerk Tillmon Bishop.”Sooner or later everybody and anybody goes down that road for onereason or another.”

The project is nearly one and half miles in length.

Workers began milling and laying hot mix on Monday.

When the work is finished sometime next week, Industrial ParkRoad will have a new 3-inch overlay from Old Highway 51 to theintersection of North Jackson Street and Industrial Park Road, butthe bridge will not be overlaid. After a few weeks of curing, thestreet will be striped.

“It’s going to look really nice,” said County Engineer JeffDungan. “It’s going to look like it’s new.”

Dungan added that the fresh look is merely a repair to an oldbroken down road. The engineer mentioned the project is about fiveyears past the point of something needing to be done, but the lackof funds prevented the renovations.

“We’re doing a repair. We’re not doing a reconstruction,” saidDungan.

He mentioned the current repair is the best option at this pointwith the current funds available, but the county would see fiveyears of good use out of the road before it begins to wear down.The engineer said he would have liked to reconstruct the road’sfoundation, but that would have been too costly.

“To be realistic, with the amount of truck traffic it would takethree of more times the amount of money we’re spending (toreconstruct the road),” said Dungan.

As Industrial Park Road continues to take a beating from theheavy amount of traffic the street experiences, all that can bedone is have hot mix on standby.

“We’ll have to deal with (future road conditions) when the timecomes, with the resources we have,” said Dungan.

Bishop said the county approved the project several months ago,recognizing how dangerous the road becomes during inclementweather. He also mentioned the wide variety of people, from soccermoms to truck drivers, who travel the road.

“That road is so well traveled with all the heavy trucks and therecreation activity that goes on out there that over the years ithas just worn down to where it’s really in need of repair,” saidBishop.

Mayor Les Bumgarner also commented on how the road does notexperience normal wear and tear due to the tucks that frequentlyuse the street. He said the project was another chance to work withthe county.

“When the road was first put down, it wasn’t designed for thatkind of heavy traffic,” said Bumgarner. “We’re really gladWashington came in and helped us.”