NASHUA — An engineer for the Broad Street Parkway said that the roadway project is moving forward and is under budget.

“I think we are doing better than our worst fears,” said John Vancor of Hayner Swanson, Inc. of Nashua. “We think we are several million dollars ahead of where we thought we'd be a few years ago. So we have some breathing room.”

The bottom-line budget of $67.3 million predicted in January 2011 has now been decreased to about $64.3 million.

“It is a snapshot guess,” Vancor told members of the aldermanic Committee on Infrastructure last week during an update on the project.

The layout and alignment of the future 1.8-mile, two-lane urban roadway have already been designed.

Vancor, along with Fay, Spofford and Thorndike of Burlington, Mass., are creating the engineering design for the Broad Street Parkway from the Broad Street/Blue Hill Avenue intersection to Pine Street/Central Street.

The ultimate goal of the project is to connect Broad Street to the downtown area by allowing motorists to bypass Amherst Street via a second crossing of the Nashua River, possibly attracting more business and people to the Millyard Technology Park.

Last week, Alderman-at-Large Mark Cookson questioned Vancor about the bridge design, saying he heard that engineers are “looking at a different design, or a different bridge that may result in additional costs.”

All highway bridges are different, Vancor said, explaining different elements are being studied for each of the three bridges — the main Nashua River Bridge and the smaller bridges on Fairmount and Baldwin.

Design consultants are being included in conversations about different types of structures with concrete or steel beams, along with various appearances and costs, said Vancor.

“The focus has been on the (Nashua) River Bridge, primarily,” he added.

A meeting will be held sometime next month with the Nashua Board of Public Works and the Board of Aldermen to further discuss these alternatives, according to Cookson.

“We are basically peppering the design engineers with questions,” Vancor told the committee.

Various appraisals on surplus property and other property the city still needs to acquire for the road's right-of-way are also proceeding, said Vancor.

According to the most recent written update on the Broad Street Parkway, dated Oct. 18, “there are several aspects of the project related to right-of-way acquisition for which the extent of unknown information leads to uncertainty with respect to the budget and schedule.”

The bridge project was accepted by the Board of Aldermen in 2008; $37 million in funding was approved by voters the following year for construction work. Federal funds are paying for the remainder of the project.

Originally when the Broad Street Parkway was introduced, preliminary plans included a four-lane highway, but the project decreased to a two-lane road about five years ago.

Construction is expected to begin in the spring or early summer of 2013, with roadway completion by the end of 2014. A preliminary design concept of the future Broad Street Parkway is available at the city's website, www.gonashua.com.

khoughton@newstote.com