Center Junction traffic moving to new pavement

Motorists traveling between Cape Girardeau and Jackson along U.S. 61 through the Center Junction construction zone will be directed onto new pavement running parallel to the highway’s existing lanes starting next week.

According to the Missouri Department of Transportation, the shift to the new lanes is scheduled to happen between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.

“That may slide back a day or so depending on the weather,” said project manager Howard Hemmann of Penzel Construction Co., the project’s general contractor.

Hemmann said he’s keeping an eye on Hurricane Laura, which is currently impacting parts of Texas and Louisiana along the Gulf Coast. By this weekend, remnants of the storm are expected to bring heavy rainfall to the Cape Girardeau area and could delay striping and other final preparations along the new stretch of four-lane pavement.

As soon as the new section of pavement opens, MoDOT and Penzel will also open the northbound on-ramp onto Interstate 55 for motorists coming from Cape Girardeau and the southbound off-ramp from the interstate for drivers heading to Jackson.

The traffic shift and opening of the interstate ramps on the north side of U.S. 61 will be the first of three construction phases over the next six weeks that will eventually lead to a reopening of access to Veterans Memorial Drive and activation of traffic signals where Veterans Memorial Drive intersects with U.S. 61.

Jason Williams, construction materials engineer with MoDOT’s Southeast District, said opening of the southbound off-ramp is sooner than expected.

“It probably would have occurred a little bit later based on our original estimation of the construction schedule,” he said.

Although all four ramps at the interchange will be open, Williams said traffic will still be restricted to “right turns” only during the bridge and interchange construction.

“All the left turn movements at the interchange will still be closed, and that’s for safety and because those movements cause conflicts with our construction operations,” Williams said.

Meanwhile, two new girders for the new southbound bridge along Interstate 55 above U.S. 61 were installed Wednesday.

By the middle or latter part of September, sections of old U.S. 61 under the interstate will be removed and an embankment will be constructed to serve as the foundation beneath the interstate on the south end of the new northbound and southbound interstate bridges.

“The old bridges were about 580 feet long,” Williams said. “The new bridges will be about half that length.”

They will also be wider than the original 60-year-old bridges, wide enough to potentially accommodate a third lane of traffic in both directions.

Hemmann said the new southbound interstate bridge should be complete and carrying both northbound and southbound traffic by December, allowing for removal and replacement of the existing northbound bridge.

Some aspects of the $17.4 million bridge replacement and diverging diamond interchange project are running significantly ahead of schedule.

“We did not expect to have the whole east side of the project done in 2020,” Williams said. “There will still be some minor work to do in 2021, but for the most part, once we get through this six-week or so period of these three phases of construction, the Cape Girardeau side of the interchange will pretty much be finished, so a lot of the traffic work zone headaches for motorists on that side will be gone because they’ll be driving on the brand-new pavement at that point.”

The entire project, including completion of the northbound interstate bridge, is targeted for completion by November 2021.

More information about the project may be found at www.modot.org/center-junction-ddi.

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