Workers lay a drainage line Wednesday at Osan Air Base, South Korea, part of a project to widen a section of road that runs from near 51st Fighter Wing headquarters downhill alongside the base golf course. Sidewalks will also go in. (Franklin Fisher / S&S)
OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea — Workers here are set to widen one of the base’s busier roads and put in a sidewalk.
The project was to start Thursday on a stretch of Perimeter Road outside the 51st Fighter Wing headquarters and run downhill along the south side of the base golf course.
The road is used a lot by South Korean air force personnel, who walk from their main compound on base to two key operational buildings, one of them the Hardened Theater Air Control Center, or HTACC. U.S. servicemembers also use the route.
Workers will widen an 820-foot stretch of the two-lane road to 24 feet from about 18 feet. And they’ll lay a 790-foot-long sidewalk, six feet wide. There’s currently a narrow sidewalk along 30 feet of the road.
Workers also are installing a drainage line just inside the golf course.
The $40,000 project is to be finished in early July, carried out by the Kolon Engineering Co. Ltd.
"It’s to help the whole base," said wing spokesman Tech. Sgt. Matthew Summers, who added that pedestrians have been forced to walk on the road.
To clear room for the wider road, crews knocked down a cinder block wall that ran along one part of road and will replace it with another wall set farther back.
Workers already have put in retaining walls along parts of the golf course that parallel the road work to prevent the course from spilling onto the road during heavy rains.
The $104,000 wall construction is being performed by the Daebo Engineering and Construction Co. Ltd.
