27th Street work falling farther behind schedule
Work on one of Lincoln’s main thoroughfares — 27th Street — has fallen far behind schedule, detouring traffic around the Country Club Neighborhood longer than expected.
Lincoln Electric System has been working in the area since mid-July to bury power lines from South Street to Calvert Street, detouring 27th Street traffic from about 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays. Originally, work was to be done by Thanksgiving, then mid-December. Now, it could be 2011 before work wraps up.
LES Construction Supervisor Dave Brozak said workers ran into problems in the Van Dorn intersection. Earlier on, they also had difficulty finding accurate infrastructure records in the historic area.
The City Council directs LES to spend about a million dollars per year burying power lines — which cuts down on downed power lines during storms and visual clutter.
Other cable, gas and phone lines are also being buried on 27th Street, and so sometimes the workers out there are not LES’s.
LES will also be upgrading from wood poles to steel poles fed by underground wires on 27th Street from South Street to Calvert Street.
Winterized 
Hooray for buried power lines!!!
Can’t wait to see the nice, shiny new power poles on 27th from South to Calvert. That’ll be attractive. (Not!)
So, we are replacing perfectly functioning overhead lines and moving them underground? At a million dollars a year (or about $4 for every man woman and child in Lincoln every year). And for what purpose? The facts are that underground service is more expensive than overhead and, when outages occur, they take longer to restore.
Additionally, if facts were to get checked, at a million dollars a year we will essentially never have a city that is entirely underground.
This million/year (and how did we arrive at that number….because it is a nice round number that looks good in headlines?) was a political strongarming during the budget process a few years ago.
Yes, because it is SO much more attractive to have downed wooden ones and no power or heat. So rustic! *dumbass*
Didn’t mean to confuse you with the facts. I’ll try to type slower from now on.
If you’ve actually driven down 27th, I think you’d concur that the new metal poles are not only more attractive than the existing wooden ones, but they are safer, as they are not located 3 inches from the curb, but an actual safe distance back from the street. I’m all for buried power lines (and phone and cable). The area definitely looks better.