PennDot's new I-95 project at Girard Avenue promises new delays

New construction on I-95 means new traffic patterns and new delays for motorists, especially rush-hour commuters, on Philadelphia's busiest north-south highway.

Construction along a quarter-mile section at Girard Avenue began Wednesday, adding to the woes of drivers already dealing with a mile-and-a-half-long zone south of Cottman Avenue where work began Jan. 8.

Don't expect relief any time soon.

The Cottman project is scheduled to last until 2016, and the Girard project to be under way until the spring of 2015, PennDot officials said.

And after those are done, other I-95 projects will be under way at least through 2024, guaranteeing construction headaches for an entire generation of commuters.

The highway carries 159,000 vehicles a day on its busiest stretches just north of Center City.

The $212 million project near Cottman is the largest construction contract in PennDot history. It is designed to rebuild and widen I-95 between Rhawn and Levick Streets and will replace seven bridges carrying the interstate over city streets, reconstruct off-ramps at Cottman and Bleigh Avenue, and build a new southbound on-ramp at Cottman.

The new traffic pattern, which has moved three northbound and southbound travel lanes away from the median to the far right sides of the highway, will be in place for about three months as crews remove the median barrier, install drainage pipes, and rebuild the median for use as travel lanes during future construction stages.

At Girard, the $39 million project now under way is the third of six contracts for that section of I-95.

This job involves widening and rebuilding 1,200 feet of I-95 from south of Shackamaxon Street to north of Columbia Avenue to provide four lanes in each direction and a fifth lane for traffic entering and exiting the highway, replacing bridges over Shackamaxon, Marlborough Street, and Columbia, building five retaining walls, and installing sound walls with acrylic panels at the top to preserve views of the river and surrounding neighborhoods.

By March, another section will be under construction. That's when work crews will tackle expansion joint repairs between the Walt Whitman Bridge and Broad Street on the northbound lanes. That $5 million project will last until about November.

From 2000 through 2012, PennDot spent $920 million on I-95 construction in Philadelphia, Bucks, and Delaware Counties.

About $2 billion in additional construction work for I-95 is in the design phase as PennDot gradually rebuilds the entire highway through the Philadelphia region.

Because I-95 through the city is essentially a series of bridges, it has deteriorated badly, and repairs are expensive and time-consuming.

When the work is all done, the road will be a uniform four lanes wide between Race Street and Cottman, with none of the narrowing that now produces congestion and crashes.