RACINE — Widening work on Interstate 94 is on schedule to be completely finished by June, but drivers should have a much easier time getting around by the first few days of the new year, according to Wisconsin Department of Transportation spokesman Michael Pyritz.
All
four lanes of the interstate should be open — with an emergency
shoulder — from Highway G in Racine County to Highway 142 in
Kenosha County by the end of the month or very early January, Pyritz
said. The north segment of the project, from Highway G to College
Avenue in Milwaukee County, will have three lanes with a shoulder
open all winter long, Pyritz said, with four lanes open in June.
“It’s
progressing well,” he said.
In
August, the DOT said four lanes were supposed to be open between
highways 142 and G by the end of October, but the unusually rainy
September pushed those plans back.
The
lanes should be open “in the very near future, probably T-minus a
month,” Pyritz said. “Hopefully T-minus a few weeks, but Mother
Nature will have more control over that than we will.”
The
Interstate 94 North-South project was first planned a decade ago, in
2009. The entire project encompassed a 35-mile reconstruction of the
Interstate from the Illinois-Wisconsin state line all the way to
College Avenue.
About
half of the highway was widened through Kenosha County, but budget
cuts in 2011 under former Gov. Scott Walker effectively killed the
project for several years.
It
wasn’t until 2017, when the state lured Foxconn to Mount Pleasant
with a bevy of incentives, that the project got funding to
continue. And
it came back fast-tracked, with a so-called “blitz construction”
method.
Crashes
doubled or even tripled in certain spots of the work zone, and more
than doubled across the entire 18-mile span, a Journal Times
investigation found.
Through June this year, there had been more than 1,000 work-zone
crashes, resulting in more than 200 people injured, since work began
in May 2018.
From: https://journaltimes.com/news/local/dot-says-i--work-to-finish-in-june-lanes/article_3e1b7b30-4174-540b-8fb8-377c969cb204.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1
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