What Lafayette is building at the BART station, piece by piece

Lafayette's contractor spent this week tearing out asphalt at the BART station and started grading the subgrade for the roundabout area, the city said in its notice Friday, July 17. Next week the concrete in front of the new bike station goes in.

The city has posted one of these notices every week since mid-May, each a short list of pours and trenches. What they do not say in any single week is what the finished thing is supposed to be. Here is what the summer's notices add up to.

The building is a bike station, and it is the part that exists already: a concrete foundation and slab with a curb wall behind it. Everything since has been the ground in front of it.

That ground is getting a walkway and a ramp up to the station entrance, a curb, gutter and curb ramp along the edge, a light pole, drainage inlets tied into new storm drain pipe, and sleeves for irrigation so landscaping can be watered later without cutting open fresh concrete. Beyond that, at the far end of the work, is a roundabout area the crew has only now begun grading.

The order explains why the site has looked slow from the street. Pipe, sleeves and pole foundations have to be in the ground and backfilled before a slurry cement base can be poured over them, and the slurry has to cure before the finish concrete goes down on top. Only then can the old asphalt around it come out, which is what the past two weeks have been.

For the week of July 20, the contractor plans to pour the concrete curb, gutter, sidewalk and curb ramp in front of the bike station, and to keep grading and compacting subgrade for the next round of slurry cement.

For anyone walking or riding through, the ground rules have not changed all summer. Work runs 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. Emergency vehicles are given access at all times.

The city has not announced a completion date, and none of the weekly notices carries one. Questions go to Matt Luttropp, the city's engineering services manager, at 925-299-3247. The notices are posted under the city's press releases, and background on the job sits on the construction projects page for the Lafayette Town Center and BART bike station project.