A.E. Araiza / arizona daily star

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Work crews on the Fourth Avenue Underpass project will begin underground utility work today at Eighth Street and Fifth Avenue.

The utility work will continue until Tuesday but won't disrupt pedestrian or vehicle traffic or business access, said Michael Graham, spokesman for the city's Transportation Department.

"This isn't any new closure," Graham said. "There's nothing new in here that impacts folks any more than how they're already being impacted."

The project began in June when the city closed the underpass for the $26 million reconstruction project. The new underpass will have one lane in each direction for vehicle and streetcar traffic, separate bicycle lanes and two disability-accessible pedestrian paths.

Detours that take westbound traffic on Broadway into eastbound lanes will remain for another two months. Closures on Congress Street and Toole Avenue near the south side of the underpass are scheduled to be lifted by the end of February, Graham said.

The underpass project was originally scheduled for completion by the end of 2008, but it is now expected to finish by spring 2009, Graham said.

Businesses in the area are enduring, said Bill Nugent, owner of The Shanty, 401 E. Ninth St.

"It didn't affect us much until October, but that was a tough month," he said.

Then construction officials put up a large overhead sign saying all businesses are open.

"As silly as it might sound, those type of things are helping," Nugent said. "Sundt (Construction Inc.) has done everything they can to keep things open and traffic open. A lot of times these construction companies just bull ahead, but they've been communicating with us on a regular basis so we can plan for it."

Nugent said there also seems to be a decrease in Downtown workers going to Fourth Avenue on their lunch breaks, indicative of the overall disruption of the cohesiveness in Tucson's central areas.

"Usually during Club Crawl and stuff we get a lot of traffic from Downtown to Fourth Avenue," Nugent said. "Where there was a real continuous flow between Congress Street and Fourth Avenue and Main Gate, that's really cut off now."

But Nugent said the biggest factor slowing business might not be related to construction at all. "The service and hospitality industry overall is taking a huge hit now, as is the general economy," he said.

Additional underpass-related work beginning this week will close the sidewalk along the north side of Congress from Fifth Avenue east to the middle of the block. The work will run through the end of January, but Graham said business access will be maintained.

The north sidewalk and curb on Toole Avenue between Congress and Pennington streets will be closed as well starting today. Pedestrian traffic will be shifted to the south side of the road through the second week in January. Drainage work on Ninth Street and Stevens Avenue will continue and keep the roads closed from Fourth Avenue to Eighth Street through mid-March.

Uncommonly small at just 11 feet high and 42 feet wide, the Fourth Avenue Underpass was the state's oldest underpass, built in 1916.