STATEWIDE — It’s been one of the busiest years ever for the construction workers with the Indiana Department of Transportation.
Throughout the state, INDOT had 1,100 projects scheduled for the 2019 construction season.
“I-70 and 465, traffic in the mornings with construction is just a nightmare. There are a lot of times I had to leave from home to work two, three hours beforehand just to get there on time,” said driver Chris Poe. “They have definitely made a lot of improvements with the way the roads are, too.”
In the Marion County area alone, INDOT says they have spend more than $90 million on road construction. This included several projects that saw portions of I-65 and I-465, some of the most heavily traveled arteries in the Capitol City, completely shutdown while INDOT rehabbed and resurfaced the interstates.
“We’ve spent about a billion dollars on projects across the state,” said INDOT spokesman Scott Manning. “When you factor in all we invest in maintenance on top of that it’s about two and a half billion dollars in resources.”
INDOT has hundreds of more projects in the works heading into 2020, one of which will be the beginngin stages of the final leg of connecting I-69 from Martinsville to Indianapolis.
“We’re still on schedule for that,” Manning said. “Starting in the spring we will be full speed ahead on building the actual interstate. We’ll have the first construction contract to build the interstate going out in about a month.”
Manning said they are confident they will not run into the same issued they did with the previous leg of I-69 which was finished a full calender year after it was expected to be completed. He said they will be running this leg differently with the state maintaining control of how the project will be handled while contracting out the construction work on the project.
He expects I-69 to be complete done from Evansville to Indianapolis by 2024.
There are also more bridge rehab and maintenance projects in the works around Indianapolis. Manning said they will be shutting down part of I-70 on the south side of downtown in the summer of 2020 as well as I-465 on the northwest side near 96th street.
Another long-term project is already underway in Clinton County.
“On that project we have a couple of bridge deck replacements happening on I-65 between Indianapolis and Lafayette,” said Manning. “That will be happening over the course of the next couple construction season. We’ll be doing one next year and another one the following year.”
He said these projects will have lane restrictions on parts of I-65 several days in both directions.
(PHOTO: jakes47/Thinkstock)
