Bedford is moving forward with its Brown Trail reconstruction project by awarding Westwood Professional Services a $628,381 contract funded with bond money for the redesign of a segment of the roadway from Pipeline Road north to Bedford Road.

City Council Tuesday voted unanimously (7-0) to approve the contract.  Westwood’s “design services,” according to the Council meeting’s agenda, “are expected to take approximately one year” with construction anticipated to start during fiscal year 2025-2026.

The 0.8-mile stretch of the road, the agenda said, will be “reconstructed as a 2-lane each way with raised medians and other corridor improvements” and “the existing storm drain infrastructure will be replaced.” It said, “Intersection and signal improvements” are also not included.  The water and sanitary sewer system, the agenda pointed out, were “recently replaced and is not within the scope of this project.” 

The remake of Brown Trail will involve “a resurfacing and some aesthetic improvements and safety improvements,” said Joe Schweitzer, an engineer for the City as he presented the proposed project to Council.  He added that allowances in the design of the raised median will help neighborhood residents access their homes.

A total of $3.7 million is budgeted for the design and reconstruction of this segment of Brown Trail.  Half of the funding for the project, as stated by the agenda, will come from the City’s $22 million capital projects bond issue that Council approved this past May.  The other half, up to the $3.7 million budget cap, the agenda explained, will come in the form of a reimbursement from the Tarrant County 2021Transportation Bond Program (TBP).  The TBP was a $400 million bond issue approved by Tarrant County voters in November of 2021.

This remake project should not be confused, Schweitzer explained, with maintenance and improvements, done this past summer that Atmos Energy and their contractors performed and as reported by the Bedford Journal Project.  The work was on Atmos’s 12-inch natural gas pipeline that runs through Bedford along five miles of Brown Trail north of Airport Freeway, from Pleasantview Drive in Hurst to Cheek Sparger in Colleyville.

The City has worked with Westwood as recently as this past July, as also reported by the Bedford Journal Project,  to create “conceptual designs” for entry monuments and landscape improvements to the City’s gateways, intersections and medians.