Road Construction Update - Local News

Road Construction Update

By Luke Simmons.

The Nebraska Department of Roads budget shortfalls are hurting plans for future major road construction.

However, there are still several projects that are currently impacting area drivers, or are about to this fall.

A twelve mile stretch of Highway 30 between Paxton and Sutherland will be closed until harvest season while crews work on white-topping the road; a new technique being used by the district for road resurfacing.

The highway will be topped with concrete, which is more durable and will last longer than traditional black asphalt.

Gary Thayer is and engineer at the Dept. of Roads, “The reason that we're doing that is because of the life expectancy of the concrete, we should be able to get 20-25 years of life out of that and it's essentially the same cost that the asphalt overlay would have been done. The only inconvenience is the traffic has to be detoured because of the cure time for concrete.”

Drivers this fall can expect to see a major project on I-80 between Roscoe and Paxton that will cause traffic to use a single lane in each direction. It's the first time since 1993 that interstate reconstruction has been done in the area.

Thayer says, “We will be building crossovers this fall and going head to head for interstate traffic, which means we'll be down to 55 MPH between Roscoe and Paxton. And that job is expected to take a full two years, we'll be back to normal traffic over the winter time but both summer, next summer and the following summer that project will be ongoing.”

Attached Files: Area Road Projects.jpg

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