The reopening of Interstate 95 north of Philadelphia received an updated reopening date late Tuesday afternoon: this coming weekend.
In a tweet, Gov. Josh Shapiro declared that “based on the tremendous progress these crews remodeled the weekend, I can now say: We could have I-95 back open this weekend.”
The Tuesday tweet from Gov. Shapiro got here just three days after he put the time-frame to reopen the highway at two weeks. That might have put the reopening the weekend of July 1-2.
No matter when it does reopen, unless Shapiro is wildly off on his prediction, the important thing north-south East Coast interstate highway might be operating just weeks after an overpass collapsed when a fuel truck underneath the structure crashed and burned in a piece of northeast Philadelphia generally known as Tacony. Original predictions saw the highway as being closed for a time period that could be measured in months.
“We have now worked across the clock to get this done, and we’ve accomplished each phase safely and ahead of schedule,” the governor said in his Tuesday tweet.
When the collapse occurred, the net speculation was whether Pennsylvania could beat the 43 days that it took Georgia to reconstruct an overpass that was damaged by fire in 2017. In line with an article from Axios, there was skepticism that the Georgia performance may very well be topped and fear that the repairs in Philadelphia could take months, creating major disruption to business and other traffic.
Provided that, Shapiro’s statement on Saturday, much less the Tuesday update, got here as as a surprise. “I can state with confidence that we are going to have I-95 reopened inside the following two weeks,” he said Saturday at a briefing with President Joe Biden at Philadelphia’s major airport, in line with a prepared statement released by his office. “We’re going to get traffic moving again due to the extraordinary work of those here and our incredible union trade employees.”
The statement put out by Shapiro’s office had several details concerning the pace of the reconstruction.
Shapiro earlier had disclosed that demolition of the bridge and roadway had taken 4 days. That was “ahead of schedule and beating some experts’ prediction of greater than every week,” the statement said.
Laying down a base within the roadway with a foamed glass aggregate fill began Thursday, after the demolition was complete. “That very same day, the Pennsylvania State Police escorted truckloads of foamed glass aggregate fill from AeroAggregates in Delaware County up I-95 to the development site to make sure that they arrived as quickly as possible,” the statement said. “Members of the Philadelphia Constructing Trades, working for Philadelphia-based contractor Buckley & Company, have begun pouring the foamed glass aggregate into the gap within the roadway, constructing it as much as the surface level of I-95.”
Work will proceed “24/7” through the vacation weekend, in line with the statement.
An earlier FreightWaves article on the status of disruptions to trucking created by the closure may be found here.
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