(left to right) Cleto Martinez, Margarido Espinoza and Victor Ambame lay the groundwork for cement on the city's Antelope Valley Project on 20th and "Q" Streets. Marlenia Thornton, NewsNetNebraska
Workers have set up orange cones along 48th St. between Vine and "R" Streets, multiple areas of "O" Street, downtown intersections and more. This has left residents like Chad Anderson, 29, wondering where the money comes from.
"Everybody's poor - I'm poor, the government's poor-so it's a little weird they decided to do all this," he said. "I would think they could have done something else with [the money]."
The money for today's construction - some $781,000 for 2009 alone - is coming from the residents of Lincoln. Thomas Shafer, Design/Construction Section Manager for the City of Lincoln, says such taxes as the wheel tax - which you pay when you register a car - are funding the road projects now under way.
City officials plan to pour far more into road work, courtesy of the federal government. They have applied for $24 million in federal economic stimulus money, according to the Web site recovery.gov. This is part of about $380 million Nebraska officials are seeking for work throughout the state.
The federal money should start flowing in January, and the additional work will get under way once the money is in hand.
The construction is causing headaches for some residents. Adnan AlJabiry, who manages the UR Grocery on downtown "P" Street, said he's feeling a financial pinch from the road work.
"It's hurt my business. It keeps going down and down because my customers have a hard time getting here," he said.
AlJabiry said "Q" and "P" Streets have both been closed at times, making it difficult or impossible for anybody to find him. Even the alleys behind his store have been blocked. He was told it would be over by now. Said the grocer, "They said it would be a month or so but it's been two months now."
As frustrating as it can be, AlJabiry sees the benefit in fixing city streets.
"It's good to remodel everything and get new things to a city, but they should think about others-the stores, the businesses, when they do it," the grocer said.
Traffic congestion may be the biggest headache connected to of the road work. Lincoln resident Anderson lives just off Vine Street. Even though there is no work directly in front of his house, when he gets to the corner he runs into trouble.
Construction work abounds across Lincoln. Marlenia Thornton, NewsNetNebraska
Without the construction, it can take him just a couple minutes to drive his normal route. Driving the different route took him 20 minutes.
Shafer, the city design manager, says it's times like these, when small projects happen to line up all at once, that it can seem like one huge undertaking.
"I think you just find that things kind of come in spurts at times," Shafer said. "It depends on the Marcontractors and the work."
(To find a list of city projects in Lincoln, visit lincoln.ne.gov , keyword "project." A keyword search of "closure" will list all the street closures that are happening next week.
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