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Category: Architecture |
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Photo Rapid City Journal
Work on Exit 61 "ramps" up
(yuk yuk - hey I didn't write it!)
By Dan Daly, Rapid City Journal staff
RAPID CITY — Interstate 90 east of Rapid City looks something like a war zone these days.
For more than a mile, vehicle traffic threads a tenuous path between giant dirt movers, bulldozers, dump trucks and rugged mountains of dark brown dirt. Concrete crews are pouring the pilings for a new, four-lane bridge where Elk Vale Road passes over I-90.
Welcome to Exit 61, the north end of the Heartland Expressway. And right now, it’s a mess. (YEP!)
Crews with Stanley J. Johnsen Concrete Contractor began digging into the two-year, $16.5 million project in early March. When the work is all done — in July 2008 — Exit 61 will include a wide, four-lane bridge over the interstate and an urban interchange stoplight system.
With an urban interchange, all Elk Vale traffic — passing through and coming off the interstate — will be controlled by a single set of stoplights atop the bridge. It will look a lot like the intersection of S.D. Highway 79 and Catron Boulevard.
Urban interchanges move more traffic and eat up less real estate than traditional diamond or clover-leaf interchanges. The existing Exit 61 was built in 1960, a time when diamond interchanges were popular and there was little traffic on two-lane Elk Vale Road.
According to recent counts, more than 8,700 vehicles a day drive Elk Vale Road. Average daily traffic on that stretch of I-90 is estimated at 27,000 vehicles. By 2024, officials predict that 11,650 vehicles a day will be driving Elk Vale Road, and 48,000 vehicles a day will be passing through on I-90.
In addition to the Elk Vale work, I-90 is being rebuilt and repaved more than half a mile east and half a mile west of the new interchange.
Although the Exit 61 project began just last month, crews have been doing preliminary work for at least a year. The nearby Elk Vale bridge over the Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad line was rebuilt. And the service road south of I-90 has been moved farther away from the interstate.
Offutt Street, the small service road that ran along the north side of I-90, has been closed. Traffic has been rerouted to the new Mall Drive farther north.
We might as well get used to the traffic congestion. During this year’s construction, traffic on I-90 will be reduced to two lanes through November, according to the DOT Web site at sddot.com. During the Sturgis motorcycle rally in August, work affecting traffic will be halted.
rapidcityjournal.com
Copyright © 2007 The Rapid City Journal
Rapid City, SD
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