Construction will begin in November to upgrade one of the state’s perennial highway trouble spots, the interchange at Interstate 95 and Concord Pike (U.S. 202).
When the work is completed in the fall of 2014, motorists should be able to travel I-95 between the Maryland and Pennsylvania state lines without obstruction or delay, state and regional transportation officials said.
The Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT) has awarded a contract worth just over $26.7 million to Middletown-based Mumford & Miller Concrete, Inc. The bid was about $2.1 million less than state highway engineers had estimated, said Mike Williams, public relations manager for DelDOT.
The improvements were originally discussed more than a decade ago as the state rebuilt portions of Concord Pike and nearby roads, including Route 141 and Foulk Road, as part of the massive Blue Ball Properties project that was linked to the expansion of AstraZeneca’s headquarters in Fairfax, said Mark Tudor, DelDOT’s manager for the I-95/US 202 project.
When the Blue Ball project began in the early 2000s, there was not enough money available to pay for improvements at the interchange, so the work was deferred for several years, according to Tudor and Williams.
- Back ups at the Route 202 on ramp from I-95 northbound are common.
The state will use part of its annual allocation of federal highway funds to cover 80 percent of the project’s cost, Williams said.
The highways are among Delaware’s busiest, with I-95 being used by about 150,000 vehicles daily and Route 202 by about 50,000, Williams said.
Key components of the project include widening the ramps from I-95 north to Route 202 north and from Route 202 south to I-95 south from one lane to two.
The widened northbound ramps should reduce the congestion that frequently leads to rear-end collisions on and just north of the Brandywine River Bridge on I-95, Tudor said.
Traffic on the current ramp now backs up into the city of Wilmington, restricting the capacity of two of the three lanes on I-95 and creating a safety problem, according to the Wilmington Area Planning Council’s (WILMAPCO) 2011-2014 Transportation Improvement Plan. “With the improvements to U.S. 202 as part of the Blue Ball Properties project, and the widening of this ramp, the capacity and safety issues on I-95 will be eliminated,” the WILMAPCO plan states.
“We’ve been hearing from the public about I-95 and 202 for years. It’s a big issue,” said Heather Dunigan, WILMAPCO’s principal planner. “We’re very glad to see this project funded.”
“It will be easier for traffic to get over to the ramp and get out of the way of through traffic headed north on I-95.” Tudor said.
On the southbound side, the widening will make the ramp onto I-95 two lanes for its entire length. It currently starts as two lines and squeezes into one about halfway down, sometimes forcing rush hour traffic to back up onto Route 202.
The ramp onto I-95 will be longer and less curved, made possible by eliminating the current cloverleaf exit from I-95 south onto Route 202 south, Tudor said.
“By getting rid of the old ramp, traffic on both 95 and 202 will flow better,” Tudor said.
With the realigned ramp, entering traffic will be able to merge onto I-95 farther north than it can now, and that should make it easier for southbound motorists to switch into the right lane for the Delaware Avenue exits just south of the Brandywine River Bridge, Tudor and Williams said.
“The Blue Ball improvements were built to anticipate all of the widening that will be occurring on these ramps,” Tudor said.
DelDOT is replacing the cloverleaf with a new exit ramp for motorists to reach Route 202 south from I-95 south.
Under the new design, southbound motorists will exit I-95 at the current exit to Route 202 north, then split off onto a ramp that will end at a new traffic signal on Route 202 just north of the existing ramp from Route 202 north to I-95 south. At the traffic signal, motorists will be able to make a left turn only, flowing into a channelized southbound lane that will gradually merge into the southbound through lanes on Route 202, Tudor said.
- Although not visibly apparent, trucks with high loads clip the bottom of Route 202 overpass
Another aspect of the project calls for lowering the I-95 southbound roadbed under the Route 202 overpass by about two feet. The change, Tudor said, should eliminate occurrences of trucks with excessively high loads clipping the underside of the overpass.
“It happens more often than you’d think, and not all of the incidents get reported,” he said. Sometimes the incidents go unnoticed for days, because the bending that occurs on the steel in the overpass is hard to detect, and the offending trucks don’t always drop their loads, Tudor said.
From time to time, the overpass has been closed for temporary repairs but damage from passing trucks has never been serious enough to require major repairs and a long-term shutdown, he said.
The contractor will face a challenge in blasting through rock two feet deep in order to lower the roadbed, but blasting away rock is far less complex than the alternative of raising the Route 202 overpasses, Tudor said.
Although the work will make truck traffic safer on I-95, Tudor said he does not think a significant number of truckers will use I-95 instead of I-495, the recommended through route for commercial vehicles. DelDOT will continue to recommend that truckers from Pennsylvania make I-495 their first choice to reach points south of Wilmington, he said. “I-495 should be better for a lot of the long-distance traffic anyway,” he added.
Other components of the project include rehabilitating bridges on the entrance and exit ramps and improving lighting throughout the interchange.
- The Route 1 exit from I-95 southbound is routinely backed up to the Churchmans Road overpass with beach goers and Christiana Mall shoppers.
The project should be completed about the same time as work to improve the I-95 interchange with Routes 1 and 7 near Christiana Mall, about 10 miles to the south, Williams said.
“I can’t guarantee that you’ll be able to drive [the Delaware portion of] I-95 then without issues,” Dunigan said. But no other major projects are planned, she and Williams said.
“When you expand highway capacity, it’s just a matter of time” before traffic expands and new bottlenecks develop, Dunigan said.
Nevertheless, she said, projects like these I-95 improvements are planned to cope with additional traffic demands for up to 20 years. And, she added, “the only advantage to a down economy is that it keeps traffic down” so it may take longer for congestion to return to previous levels.
DelDOT anticipates occasional weekend and weeknight closures on I-95, Route 202 and the related ramps throughout the project, Williams said.
The availability of I-495 as a detour route will reduce the impact of Route 202 construction for motorists not traveling between Wilmington and Brandywine Hundred, he said.
It is too soon to determine whether any of the closures would coincide with restrictions associated with the work at Routes 1 and 7, Williams said.
“There’s a good distance between the two projects, but if you’re a traveler you will see both,” Tudor said.
