A pair of major road projects will likely complicate travel on Interstate 95 in southern Maine for the next few years even as a record number of drivers are expected to be using the highway.
Starting next spring, the Maine Department of Transportation will undertake a three-year, $30 million project to resurface the six-lane Piscataqua River Bridge, the main interstate artery to and from the state.
Another project in the wings
As construction of a new toll plaza and maintenance on Maine’s major highway bridge pick up steam, the Maine Turnpike Authority is preparing for another major expansion.
The authority’s board of directors will meet Thursday morning to receive a report on current and future traffic conditions on the highway around Portland.
The board may vote on whether to widen an 11-mile stretch of the turnpike from Scarborough to Falmouth by two travel lanes, a construction project estimated to cost almost $143 million.
An alternatives analysis report from HNTB, an infrastructure consulting company, determined that widening the highway was the only one of more than a dozen alternatives that “fully meets the study purpose, is cost effective and readily implementable.”
However, members of a citizen advisory committee set up to help with the analysis said the turnpike authority should consider other ways to reduce traffic such as public transportation, carpooling and peak travel tolling.
Between 1997 and 2004, the turnpike was widened to three lanes from the New Hampshire border to Scarborough. A decade ago, the authority shelved plans to widen the highway to Falmouth because of the Great Recession.
The board of directors meets Thursday, Sept. 6 at 9 a.m. at the turnpike authority headquarters on outer Congress Street in Portland.
At roughly the same time, the Maine Turnpike Authority will build a new toll plaza in York, about 9 miles north of the bridge. That $40 million project is on the same three-year construction schedule.
Officials from Maine DOT and the Turnpike Authority say they have plans in place to minimize travel disruption, but acknowledge there are likely to be some traffic headaches.
“With a project like this and the amount of traffic we have, we realize there is going to be impacts,” said Heath Cowan, a project manager for TY Lin International, a engineering firm hired to help Maine develop its construction plan.
Maine transportation authorities plan to keep the normal three lanes of traffic in both directions open between Memorial Day and mid-October, when the bridge has more vehicles carrying summer visitors to Maine.
But for most of the year, one lane of traffic in both directions will be closed, so workers can fix issues in the concrete bridge deck, repave and install new waterproof membrane.
Even when all travel lanes are open, drivers will still be moving through an active work site.
“Three lanes in a construction zone is not exactly like three lanes with no construction,” Cowan said.
The turnpike authority will keep all travel lanes near the toll plaza open year-round. But in conjunction with the bridge work, issues could develop, spokeswoman Erin Courtney said.
“In April and May, it could be an issue if traffic is up as it has been, people will see delays,” Courtney said.
MORE TRAFFIC
Traffic on the Maine Turnpike keeps breaking monthly and yearly records.
During this past Labor Day weekend, the agency recorded more than 1.1 million transactions, a growth of about 5 percent over the same time in 2017, according to preliminary turnpike estimates.
The number of toll transactions, about 32.2 million as of June, is up more than 6 percent over last year at the same time, according to turnpike records.
“Every year just keeps becoming the new record,” Courtney said.
Turnpike officials did not plan to build the new plaza at the same time as bridge maintenance work, but construction was put off because of a lawsuit by opponents of the new plaza to overturn a environmental permit, she said.
A Maine judge in July upheld the permit, allowing the authority to start construction of an open-road tolling and traditional cash toll booth plaza about a mile and a half north of the current toll booths. Preliminary work on the plaza is expected to start this fall.
A contract for work on the Piscataqua River Bridge is expected to go out to bid in a couple months, and construction should begin in the spring, said Wayne Frankhauser, head of the bridge program for Maine Department of Transportation said.
About 74,000 vehicles a day drive across the bridge, but on busy summer weekends traffic volume nearly doubles to 130,000 vehicles a day, according to state statistics.
BRIDGE’S SIZE COMPLICATES PROJECT
Resurfacing the bridge deck and replacing traffic barriers is normal bridge maintenance, but the scale of the Piscataqua bridge makes the work more complex, Frankhauser said.
The structure, including approach spans in Maine and New Hampshire, is almost a mile long and the center span sits 135 feet above the Piscataqua River.
“With this bridge, it’s sheer size, it makes it much more complicated than the average project,” Frankhauser said. “It is the primary way into the state, everything that comes into the state leaves over this bridge; it is absolutely vital.”
Construction of the bridge was completed in 1973, and it has an expected lifespan of 100 years.
The cost of the bridge maintenance will be split between Maine and New Hampshire with a smaller amount paid by the Maine Turnpike for some work done near Kittery.
Peter McGuire can be contacted at 791-6325 or at:
pmcguire@pressherald.com
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