Project to connect I-95, PA Turnpike nears major milestone

Fifty years in the making, officials anticipate the connection between I-95 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike will be open by late summer/early fall 2018.

Motorists on Interstate 95 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike soon will be able to get from here to there on just one road. It’s only taken about 50 years.

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 that runs through parts of Bucks County. 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.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike already connects directly to its counterpart in the Garden State.

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 erected in Bristol Township.

Rather than taking a mix of highways — which divert interstate traffic onto local roads — across two states to reconnect to I-95, drivers will be able to remain on one continuous route from Bucks and into New Jersey when the ramps open in late summer or early fall of 2018, according to consultant Jay Roth, senior program manager with Jacobs Engineering.

“This time next year, all of stage one construction activities will be completed,” Roth said in December. “We’ll still have some activities at the Bensalem interchange (of the Pennsylvania Turnpike) still going on and construction along the turnpike, but the I-95 ramps will be routed onto the Pennsylvania and New Jersey turnpikes and we will have the roads re-designated.”

Once the ramps are opened in the late summer or early fall, significant changes will be made on the routes, Roth said.

I-95′s current configuration takes northbound drivers in Pennsylvania over the Scudder Falls Bridge in Lower Makefield into Ewing, New Jersey. The highway ends there at Route 1 in Lawrence and becomes Interstate 295, which takes drivers south in the Garden State — in other words, back in the direction they just came from in Pennsylvania. To continue north, drivers need to travel on Route 1 to New Brunswick and then reconnect on I-95 in New Jersey. It’s about an 8-mile trip now.

Once the project is completed, the section of what is now I-95 between the new interchange (which is being built just north of the Bristol exit on I-95) and the Scudder Falls Bridge will be renamed I-295 East/West. I-95 between the Scudder Falls Bridge and Route 1 in Princeton will become I-295 North/South.

How do motorists get from I-95 northbound to the Pennsylvania and New Jersey turnpikes?

A driver traveling northbound on I-95 from Philadelphia will pass the Bristol Township exit and take the new flyover ramp that links up with the eastbound Pennsylvania Turnpike, which will be redesignated as I-95 from the Neshaminy Falls toll plaza in Bensalem over the Delaware River Bridge to the New Jersey Turnpike.

The NJ turnpike is already alternately designated as I-95.

Drivers on southbound I-95/NJ Turnpike will cross the Delaware River Bridge into Bucks County and a new flyover ramp — the higher of the two constructed in Bristol Township — to the current I-95 south into Philadelphia.

Under the current road system, drivers needed to exit 95 and travel on Routes 413 and 13 to connect to the turnpike interchange on Route 13, adding cars and slowing interstate commerce, officials said.

What if I’m on the PA turnpike and I want get to the New Jersey turnpike and vice versa?

Drivers will remain on what they have long known as the PA turnpike after paying the final toll at the Neshaminy Falls toll plaza.

A ramp to I-95 South will take drivers off the turnpike on the right and merge them onto the interstate. Drivers coming from New Jersey can pick up the Pennsylvania Turnpike by staying on the highway and passing through the Neshaminy Falls toll plaza.

“There’s going to be a bit of a learning curve at the beginning,” Roth said. “We’ll probably see some spikes of confusion from the summer and holiday travelers who are not regular users of the system. We’re going to do what we can to work with the customers.”

An aggressive marketing campaign is set to begin soon to get people informed, Roth said, incorporating print, radio and social media strategies. A website, which will include specifics regarding route changes, new exit numbers and the schedule for implementation, will be launched next month. Project managers plan to coordinate with local municipalities and emergency responders to get the word out on the new routes.

The project managers also will notify mapping software companies of the changes to ensure GPS apps and technology are up to date when the interchange opens.

The interchange project has been a long time coming.

While it was envisioned in 1969 when I-95 was completed, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and the Turnpike Commission performed several studies through the next three decades to find a solution and a way to pay for it. The U.S. Department of Transportation approved the preliminary designs in 2003, federal funding was approved in 2004 and engineering designs completed in 2010. Shovels hit the ground shortly after as work started on the reconfiguration.

A combination of federal funding and capital from the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission provided the revenue for the $425 million first phase of the project. Connecting the two highways exhausted the federal money available for the project, Roth said. The first phase also replaced the Hulmeville Road bridge in Bensalem over the Pennsylvania Turnpike with a longer span in anticipation of widened turnpike lanes. Walter said the current stage of the project has been funded by a combination of dedicated federal and Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission funds.

What’s next?

Two stages of the project remain: Stage 2, which involves widening the turnpike east of the Neshaminy Falls plaza, is expected to cost $450 million. Stage 3, which includes adding a second bridge over the Delaware River so one bridge carries traffic east and another carries traffic west, is expected to cost $500 million. Work on the two stages has not been scheduled, as the turnpike commission, PennDOT and the Federal Highway Authority work to develop a plan to pay for the project.

Bucks County Commissioner Chairman Robert Loughery brought the need for additional federal funding for stage 2 directly to President Donald Trump on Monday, when he participated in an infrastructure roundtable at the White House.

“I wanted to get this on his radar,” Loughery said Friday afternoon. “This is an important project for Lower Bucks, the Delaware Valley region and the East Coast. We have all the hard parts done, with the permitting and engineering. Now we just need the funding.”

http://www.buckscountycouriertimes.com/news/20180218/project-to-connect-i-95-pa-turnpike-nears-major-milestone

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