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Work begins this week to lay Loop Trolley tracks

Artist rendering of the proposed Loop Trolley stop in front of the Delmar MetroLink Station.
courtesy Loop Trollety Transportation Development District
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Loop Trolley Transportation Development District
Artist rendering of the proposed Loop Trolley stop in front of the Delmar MetroLink Station.

Traffic on three blocks of Delmar Blvd. is being diverted to the road’s westbound lanes beginning Monday in order to start laying tracks for the Loop Trolley.

While construction is underway between Kingsland Ave. and Melville Ave. there will be no street parking on that stretch of Delmar.

Instead, the westbound parking lane will be opened to westbound traffic, and the westbound traffic lane will be converted into an eastbound traffic lane.  

“During the daytime the kind of noisier and dustier parts of construction is going to happen,” Loop businessman and trolley district chairman Joe Edwards said. “And then at night we’ll pay a little bit extra but have flag men so you don’t have to have those beeping noises. And that’s when the 80 foot sections of track can be put in, when there’s not much traffic at all.”

Once the track is laid on the first section of Delmar, construction will move eastward to the next section of the street, with each section expected to take three weeks to complete.

“So during this three-week period the two parking lanes won’t be available for parking, about 40 cars, but there are hundreds and hundreds of spaces available in the Loop in the same area,” Edwards said.

Edwards said track construction for the Loop Trolley should be complete by the end of the year, with the trolley opening to the public as early as fall 2016.

Follow Camille Phillips on Twitter: @cmpcamille.