BANGOR, Maine — Crews expect to soon clear off Union Street after completing a bridge replacement project that’s taken more than two years.
Maine Department of Transportation spokesman Ted Talbot said Thursday that crews should finish the final touches and leave the site within the next two weeks. All that remains is finishing the wiring for traffic signals, Talbot said.
The early stages of the $10 million project to replace the bridge, which passes over Interstate 95, started in April 2014. The project is finishing a few months ahead of schedule. Initial plans put the completion date sometime in November.
The replacement has been a headache for motorists and nearby residents. The transportation department shut down two lanes of the bridge at a time, replacing one half of the 54-year-old bridge and then the other. Access to nearby neighborhood streets was shut down to decrease traffic turning onto those streets to avoid the construction. The Department of Transportation started planning the project as early as 2010.
Some 19,000 vehicles drive over the bridge every day, according to the transportation department, and another 44,000 pass under it on the interstate. The state didn’t want to shut down the bridge entirely, which would have allowed crews to replace it faster, because of the high volume of traffic it sees.
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