I-95 shutdown planned tonight in Delaware

Both directions of the highway will be reduced to one lane, and at various times shut down completely.

Construction work is picking up steam at the intersection of State Route 1 and I-95.  To make way for more work, overhead sign structures will be removed, forcing the lane closures.  The complete shutdown of the highway will take place at various times after midnight.  The road could be closed for up to 15 minutes at a time.

Last week, traffic to and from the Christiana Mall on Route 1 started using the new Christiana Mall Road bridge. The old bridge should be demolished by the end of next weekend.  You can watch the demolition progress on a DelDOT webcam.  The bridge is being removed to make room for new, high-speed exit ramps that will take traffic from 95 to Route 1 on an elevated roadway over I-95.  The design should eliminate much of the bottleneck that happens at the interchange during rush hours and especially during the summer beach season.

In a recent interview with WHYY, Delaware’s Transportation Secretary Shailen Bhatt said the interchange reconstruction was on schedule.  “We’ve had the advantage of having a very mild winter, so a lot of our projects are moving forward, so we believe that that project will open on time,” he said.  Bhatt said while originally slated to be a three-year project, the current timeline has the work scheduled to be completed in just two years, with the first cars driving over the new interchange around October 2013.