Officials anticipate the connection between I-95 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike, a project 50 years in the making, will be open by late summer/early fall 2018.
Since I-95′s completion in 1969, plans called for creating a seamless link between the interstate and the turnpike. In 2018, project engineers say, they will finally make good on the decades-old promise to make the connection and have I-95 stretch continuously from Maine to Florida.
It will be a major milestone in the massive, $1.1 billion project that ultimately will realign the interstate and complete the final stage of connecting the highways in the heavily traveled corridor. The project aims to improve travel times and distances for drivers using local roads to transfer from the Pennsylvania Turnpike to I-95—by an estimated 10,000 vehicle hours and some 166,000 miles traveled by 2025—and creating easier interstate travel with New Jersey.
Construction crews are only months away from completing the years-long process of creating the missing links on the interstate, according to project engineers. The project has included bridge replacements in Bristol Township and Bensalem, road widening and the construction of multiple flyover ramps, including those still being built in Bristol Township.
Once the project is completed, the section of what is now I-95 between the new interchange and the Scudder Falls Bridge will be renamed I-295 East/West, and I-95 between the Scudder Falls Bridge and Rte. 1 in Princeton will become I-295 North/South.
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Source: Bucks County Courier Times
