Work on the main MoPac express lane project will finally wrap up in March, more than three years after the original proposed completion date. “I see the light at the end of the tunnel finally," said Justin Word, director of engineering for the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, which is overseeing the project. “The [punch] lists are short. There’s some progress every day that we can measure and independently verify. It gives me a lot more comfort.” The March final completion date does not include about $4.5 million worth of work that McCarthy Building Co. is finishing. The work in this contract, which includes the sounds walls by the Westminster senior living facility and the shared-use path at US 183, will be done in July, Word said.

Adding capacity, reliability

The MoPac Improvement Project added one managed toll lane between Parmer Lane and Cesar Chavez Street. The toll is variably priced and rises as traffic and demand increases in an effort to keep the express lanes moving. The CTRMA set the base toll originally at $0.25 per section and increased it to $0.30 per section in January. Officials broke ground on the project five and a half years ago. The original opening date was late 2015 with substantial completion in January 2016. Part of the northbound toll lane opened in October 2016, and the rest of the toll lanes opened in October 2017. Problems arose early on in the project with the original contractor CH2M, which Dallas-based Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. acquired in December 2017. These issues included inclement weather, a lack of labor, discovery of unknown underground utilities and hard rock, according to former CH2M officials. The two parties attempted to resolve the issues and ended up settling in September 2017. The CTRMA agreed to pay CH2M a total of $21.5 million to settle those disputes.

Payment remaining

Word said the agency still has $13.6 million left to pay CH2M, which lost out on $1 million for failing to meet the final acceptance deadline. The remaining funds are for the company finishing work on the sounds walls and change orders that the CTRMA added to the project. The amount also includes $7.7 million for completing the final punch list, which is a list of work the contractor must complete or fix before final payment. The total cost for the project, however, has not exceeded the expected amount of $233 million, Word said.