Monterey’s estimated $1.1 million rail trail extension project remains in the preliminary design phase.
Consulting Engineer Jerry Warren said complications with utility locations have led to a request for a design waiver from T-DOT to reduce certain sections of the trail to eight feet. Warren said the engineering firm is reaching out to utility companies to see what utilities will need to be moved.
“We are still waiting for some from a few that have not responded yet,” Warren said. “But we are working with the town, and as we get information in, we just try to gather that information, put it together, and then put that on the plans.”
The rail trail extension would start on Oak Street and run westward along the railroad tracks and then curve around along Woodcliff Road to connect to West Commercial Avenue.
Warren said once preliminary design plans are finished, they will be submitted to T-DOT for approval. Warren said it is still too early to tell when the project construction will begin.
“I would be guardedly optimistic and say that we would hope for a start sometime in 2026,” Warren said. “We have recently requested and were granted an extension of the start date, and I think that went until March or April of 2027. We hope to beat that, but there are a number of factors that influence construction on these types of projects.”
Monterey received T-DOT’s Transportation Alternatives Program grant in 2022 to help fund the majority of the project. Warren said though the project has taken a long time to get to the preliminary design phase, slow progress is par for the course.
“It’s been going fairly well,” Warren said. “For projects of this nature, when you are working with state agencies and it’s federal funding, sometimes things don’t work quite as quickly as they might in the private sector or in other areas, but it’s just working through the process, and that’s what we’ve been trying to do.”
Warren said he does expect to hear back from T-DOT fairly soon about the design waiver.