Posted on 05/21/2018 8:00:22 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The Maryland State Highway Administration has completed two major projects that officials said will make the drive to the beach much easier.
Construction is complete on adding a fourth eastbound lane to the Severn River Bridge in Annapolis, which can be a major source of afternoon congestion.
"We found three things that were adding to the traffic on that bridge. One was just a lot of traffic. Two was everyone who gets at the top of that bridge, they like to slow down and look at the Severn River at the beautiful view. And, three, these merge areas before and after the bridge," said Greg Slater, administrator of the SHA.
To fix the traffic bottleneck problem, crews added an extra lane and made changes to merge areas.
There's also good news for those who travel on Maryland Route 404.
"(It was a) headache last summer; it will be great this summer," Slater said.
Crews added an additional lane in each direction on Route 404 from U.S. Route 50 to Denton, the portion of the road that caused huge backups last summer. That work was supposed to be finished by Memorial Day, but was completed ahead of schedule.
"We wanted to impact travelers one construction season, and it was painful then, but what you'll see this year is a wide open 404," Slater said.
SunFest takes place this weekend in Ocean City, so people who are headed to the Eastern Shore should be aware of some other construction projects underway. Crews are almost done replacing all of the bridges on the Salisbury bypass.
There are also improvement projects underway in Ocean City.
"In Ocean City, in particular, we've had some pedestrian safety challenges. So we're resurfacing the roadway in Ocean City, and we've created this beautiful median fence. (It) looks like a dune fence from about Route 90 all the way to the convention center," Slater said.
The SHA currently has 506 projects underway, which is the most ever in state history, and it is looking ahead to the triple bridges in two or three years, which would involve a complete overhaul of the bridge connecting Interstate 70 to the Beltway.
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
Just in time for the Memorial Day weekend traffic.
And this is important to the whole country for just what reason?
I’m local, just got back on line after being in the ER for hours, and was puzzled to see this on FR “breaking” news at my first viewing tonight.
Yeah, we have so many highway repair projects going here in the SF Bay Area, I could take all the bandwidth of FR to describe them. Just seemed to me to be an inconsequential post.
I don’t mind seeing local stuff, just don’t think of a highway project especially being “breaking” - and not really national as implied.
A better category might’ve helped.
I hope they put up the supports and tension wires before actually laying the spans down.
What they actually did on the bridge was to simply cram in a 4th eastbound lane on the existing bridge, so that there are seven narrower lanes, rather than six full-width lanes.
Won’t make that big of a difference. I have seen Bay Bridge traffic backed up fifteen or more miles especially on Fridays in summer.
Bad news. This just means that there will be more swamp creatures coming to my town. They should immediately start working on the Bay Bridge. :)
I remember the Sunday afternoon return traffic and a sign somewhere that said “If you lived here you’d be home now”
Oh boy. Glad I don’t drive that.
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