Mar 9, 2021 2 min read

Crews resumed work Monday night on the Jefferson Avenue reconstruction project in Washington that will improve traffic flow near the Interstate 70 interchange.

The overnight construction with intermittent lane closures will allow for the upgrade of traffic signals, expansion of a right turn lane onto the eastbound ramp to the interstate and repaving of the road between Route 844 and Tyler Avenue.

This is the second year of the project that the state Department of Transportation expects to be completed by the end of 2022.

“This year for construction will probably be the meat of it,” PennDOT spokesman Jay Ofsanik said. “We’re doing a lot of work and doing our best to do most of our work at night.”

Last year, crews performed utility work, leaving the road with an uneven surface in some places that will be repaved this summer.

“Now that the utility work is pretty much finished, the contractor will be working through that whole area reconstructing it and repaving,” Ofsanik said. “It’s going to be happening through the summer and into the final phases.”

Work was paused over the winter, but will now continue weekdays from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. to minimize traffic problems. Flaggers will direct traffic in the area when there are single-lane closures.

The work will be focused near Tyler Avenue at first, but then move to other sections of Jefferson Avenue. Both the eastbound and westbound ramps to and from I-70 will remain open, although there may be periodic closures of the westbound ramps during the summer while crews work on a section at Wylie Avenue, Ofsanik said.

“As they finish that area, they’ll be working on the section of Wylie as well as we go into the summer months,” he said.

New traffic lights are expected to be installed at the interstate interchanges on Wylie and Jefferson avenues to ease traffic flow coming from and entering the interstate.

The project is estimated to cost between $7 million and $12 million.