Originally published March 21, 2009
NEW HAVEN — The drivers waiting in line to slip through the bottleneck from Interstate 91 to Interstate 95 may have about 13 months left to their misery.
By April 2010, there should be two lanes instead of one on that southbound stretch, and the contractor, Walsh Construction Co. of Sharon, Mass., has a good reason to get it done on time.
“We made it so important that there’s an incentive, a $2 million incentive” to finish that part of the overall project on time, said Brian Mercure, the state Department of Transportation’s assistant district engineer for the New Haven Harbor crossing improvement project.
“If he wants to get to the bonus, he has to make that date,” Mercure said, referring to the contractor.
Widening the I-91/I-95 southbound merge is one piece of the project that will reconfigure and rebuild the interchange of those highways and Route 34.
The daily traffic jam is the 22nd worst bottleneck in the country, according to the traffic-monitoring company INRIX. The half-mile stretch is congested 63 hours a week, with an average speed during that time of 13.4 mph.
The length of time people are sitting in line actually dropped five hours from 2007 to 2008, INRIX reported, but average speed also dropped, from 16.4 mph.
Mercure said the work won’t further restrict traffic at the merge during rush hours.
To get ready for construction on the merge, the two ramps near the Brewery Street post office are scheduled to close permanently on Monday, Mercure said. One is an off-ramp from Route 34 eastbound onto Brewery Street; the other is an on-ramp from Brewery Street onto southbound Interstate 95.
Drivers going to the post office or Ikea from downtown or leaving the area to head toward New York will have to use the Exit 46 on- and off-ramps on Sargent Drive.
“That whole area becomes a work zone,” Mercure said. “We’re going to need more area to stockpile more material that we can reuse.”
The interchange reconstruction project also includes a new flyover bridge to get from northbound I-95 to Route 34 west, which will soar over the highway. In preparation for that, the bridge over Long Wharf Drive is being widened. In the future, the Exit 46 ramps will be moved farther west, across from Gateway Community College.
The vast harbor-crossing project has resulted in tall cranes, dug-up earth and felled trees all around the harbor, with work going on to construct the foundations for a new Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge on one end and to widen the Howard Avenue bridge over I-95 on the other.
The latest work site is off Hamilton Street near Sports Haven, where piles are being driven into the ground. That job is related to the bridge project.
Ed Stannard can be reached at estannard@nhregister.com or 789-5743.
URL: http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2009/03/21/news/new_haven/a1_--_ramps.prt
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