Posted on 11/09/2018 8:04:37 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The commutes of tens of thousands of people will be disrupted for the next few years as Maryland replaces the Interstate 895 bridge north of the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel.
The Maryland Transportation Authority plans to limit that part of the expressway to one lane in each direction starting later this month for the $189 million project to replace the 60-year-old bridge.
The northbound lanes of I-895 will close from the tunnel to ODonnell Street on Nov. 27 the Tuesday after Thanksgiving and the two southbound lanes will be converted to two-way traffic through spring 2020. Once the northbound span has been rebuilt, it will carry two-way traffic through spring 2021 while the southbound span is replaced.
This is going to have a significant impact on peoples travel, Maryland Transportation Secretary Pete Rahn said. People are going to notice.
The state is recommending people use Interstate 95 or the I-695 beltway as an alternative to I-895 unless they need to reach one of its exits. The Holabird Avenue exit ramp from the bridge also will be replaced and closed during the project, disrupting truck traffic to the port of Baltimore and warehouses such as Amazons in the area.
Unless 40 percent of the 79,000 drivers who take I-895 each day use an alternative route, Rahn said, were going to see a lot of unhappy people.
The project also includes $28 million in repairs and upgrades to the Harbor Tunnel, which will be completed during 60-day, continuous closures of each of its bores: the northbound one in spring 2019, and the southbound in spring 2020. Two-way traffic will operate in the opposite bore during each closure.
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
There is an easy solution for drivers: avoid 895 and take 95.
On March 17, 1930, construction of the Empire State Building began. Under the direction of architects Shreve, Lamb & Harmon Associates, the framework rose 4 ½ stories per week. On May 1, 1931 President Hoover presses a button in Washington, D.C. officially opening and turning on the Empire State Building's lights.
The devolution of our great nation continues.
Anyone like to bet on whether this will be way over budget and take a whole lot longer than projected?
3 yrs??? Ha ha, if anyone believes that and the “estimated budget”....
Last night I drove by the Tacoma Dome in Western WA.... gotta be 20 yrs now of dirt turning.... And don’t get me started on Snoqualmie Pass, Interstate 90.
I am not sure traffic around Baltimore and DC can get any worse.
We live 30 miles north of Baltimore. One of our kids lives south. He’s home convalescing after getting four wisdom teeth yanked today. I just told him about the construction and he said “see you in three years.”
3 years means a decade in Maryland Construction Time. It took over three years to complete a simple two mile road widening project in Aberdeen, MD.
WUT! I’ll bet traffic was a breeze before this right? Can’t say since I haven’t been to MD since 1947. Came close a couple of times.
I’ve lived in Queens for 15 years and there has never been a moment when the Van Wyck Expressway has NOT been under construction. Funny, even on nice days you barely see any construction workers working. Ditto a bit closer to home; there is a street which includes a bridge over a park which has been under construction for like a year, horribly congesting traffic which depends on that stretch of road for access to 3 major highways. And what is the point of this latter construction? I couldn’t figure it out until quite recently, what with the barriers depriving us of lanes and the bumper to bumper chronic congestion. It seems that they have now permanently removed a much-needed car lane and widened the sidewalk across the bridge to about FIFTEEN FEET wide. Anyone reading this by now has dropped to the floor from freak-out, right? Moreover, in good ol’ DeBlASSio fashion, they have not painted the curb of this intrusion into the driving lanes with reflective paint so that if you are unfamiliar with the area, it would be quite easy to drive up onto the wide sidewalk at night, as the lanes and such are barely visible. Under DeBlASSio, we now also have the rightmost lanes on most major thoroughfares painted red and reserved exclusively for buses, forcing major congestion upon the 2 remaining lanes. If that were not enough, several left turn lanes in my area have now been eliminated; if you don’t approach the store you want by an entirely different route, you are forced to drive past the street where you used to simply be able to turn left and then hit the store, continue on without turning for several long blocks, and THEN execute a U-turn to approach the street you wanted to turn left on, and make a RIGHT turn. INSANE!!!!
Three years sounds good for me. Highway 34 in Colorado has taken over 5 years to fix 27 miles at a cost of over $330,000,000.
Silly rabbit, you’re not supposed to drive anymore. Bad for the planet. You should walk or take public transportation regardless of weather or your physical condition. Hence, your selfish vehicular lane has been traded for friendly sidewalks and bike paths.
I feel your pain buddy. Only going to get worse.
“Highway 34 in Colorado has taken over 5 years to fix 27 miles at a cost of over $330,000,000”
most here won’t know that US 34 runs along at river-level in a VERY narrow, steep canyon and has been repeatedly washed out by flash floods. Prior to this, repairs were band-aid fixes.
This time the highway was bot “fixed”, but rebuilt from scratch moving it high up onto the canyon walls out of reach of flooding, necessitating continuous rock drilling and blasting and moving an enormous amount of blasted hard rock. This has necessitated shutting the entire highway down for most of the time, except that every summer construction was halted and the highway opened for tourist traffic because US 34 is one of two major highways that access Rocky Mountain Park from the eastern side ... rebuilding this mountain highway was a massive, massive construction endeavor ...
furthermore, construction took 2.5 years, not 5, and was completed on time ...
https://www.codot.gov/projects/floodrelatedprojects/us-34-big-thompson-canyon-1
https://www.google.com/search?q=us+34+construction+project+budget
Not to mention road construction shutting down our communities for 5 years.
Sounds like an improvement long term, but short term what a nightmare. That viaduct has no shoulders for example.
The Empire State Building was a privately funded project. However, public works were more efficient in the past. The New Jersey Turnpike, a key thoroughfare on the East Coast, was completed in its full length in 23 months. The most recent improvement project. undertaken in 2009, widened about 25 miles, but was not completed until 2014.
It appears that they added some modest shoulders to the viaduct between the tunnel and the I-95 overpass at some point in its life cycle, as shown by accompanying expansion joints running alongside the white lines on each side of the viaduct.
Well, there goes my shortcut to the airport.
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