Giving I-95 drivers a breather
By Chuck McGinness | Sunday, August 10, 2008
Copyright 2008 The Palm Beach Post
Consider it a lesson learned.
When the widening of Interstate 95 in northern Palm Beach County gets under way this month between PGA Boulevard and Indiantown Road, crews will create a transition zone linking the two 4-mile segments under construction.
A 1,400-foot-long, 10-lane stretch just south of Donald Ross Road will allow for a smoother flow of traffic throughout the upcoming three to four years of road work, said Scott Burrie, project manager for the state Department of Transportation.
Michigan-based contractor Posen Construction is building the northern section, and Community Asphalt of Hialeah is doing the southern portion. It's not always possible for the two contractors to be in sync where the jobs meet, so the transition zone is meant to help drivers navigate from one construction area to the other.
Drivers in the zone will be able to shift to the left or the right, depending on the circumstances, without having to hit the brakes for abrupt lane changes, Burrie said.
The need for such a zone was recognized more than seven years ago when the widening of I-95 through Palm Beach County got started in Delray Beach and Boynton Beach.
Traffic backed up at the L-30 Canal near Delray Beach - the dividing line between two projects - because of a lack of coordination between contractors. If one contractor was working on the outside of the highway and the other had crews in the median, motorists had to make quick weaves through the construction area.
Among other mayhem, that section of I-95 was the site of a horrific multi-car crash that killed four people in 2001. A driver using the median shoulder to speed past slow-moving traffic smashed into a barrier where the shoulder suddenly ended, causing the car to go airborne and onto another car.
For the upcoming construction in north county, motorists should not see any work on the highway until early next year except in the quarter-mile transition area. In the next few months, contractors will erect noise walls and get ready for the widening, Florida Department of Transportation spokeswoman Alicia De Fago said.
Once the expansion starts, motorists will face nighttime lane closures and delays, similar to what they have experienced during the past few years on other parts of I-95.
Commuters will get a bit of a bonus when the section from Blue Heron Boulevard to north of Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard is completed in September. The carpool lanes from north of Palm Beach Lakes to PGA will open, said Meredith Rapp, spokeswoman for The Corradino Group, the engineering firm overseeing the widening.
A blitz to finish the paving north of the Palm Beach Lakes curve may be causing traffic to stack up a little more than normal.
When the paving is done, only the section from Palm Beach Lakes to Southern Boulevard will be left to complete. It will remain a source of aggravation for at least another year.
North of Palm Beach Lakes, work has started on a new $6.3 million bridge that spans a small canal running under the interstate. The original plan was to expand an existing culvert over the canal, but engineers determined a bridge would be more secure. The bridge should be finished just before the highway widening is to be done in September 2009, Rapp said.
"Most people won't even notice anything is different with the construction," she said.
