A portion of the I-95 and Route 896 construction project in Newark is complete.
A major milestone was hit in the project this week with the opening of the new I-95 southbound ramps to 896 northbound and southbound.
C.R. McLeod is the director of community relations for DelDOT.
"For traffic coming from 95 southbound, to reach 896, there is now separated traffic lanes and a dedicated flyover, just for that traffic movement itself," said McLeod.
McLeod notes now coming off 896 to I-95 northbound, there’s no interaction with any other traffic and a new flyover ramp will be used to access 95 northbound later this year.
The goal of this project is to reduce crashes. The existing interchange had seen lots of incidents on both roads with several hundred crashes in the years preceding the start of construction according to McLeod.
All new ramps are expected to be open by the end of the year with some work still to be done early next year.
The next step is to rehab the bridges over the interchange as well as two existing bridges on I-95 northbound and southbound.
"So we're actually now with the opening of this new ramp and taking a lot of that traffic volume off of the 896 bridges that cross the I-95 interchange, we're going to begin a rehabilitation project on those bridges themselves," said McLeod.
He adds speed cameras to help make it safer for the workers and drivers in the construction zone are still up.
