Home > The Cone Zone > Archives > 2007 > May > 09 > Entry
Atlantic Avenue Closed This Weekend
If your weekend activities include a drive on West Atlantic Avenue near the turnpike, pull out Plan B.
Atlantic will be closed under the turnpike from 6 a.m. Saturday until about 9 p.m. Sunday.
Construction crews will be tearing down the old southbound bridge and Atlantic will be covered with tons and tons of debris.
The entrance and exits ramps will be open. But the northbound on and off ramps will be accessible only from the east and the southbound ramps will only be accessible from the west.
It’s all part of the ongoing project to rebuild the Atlantic overpass.
A couple of weeks ago, traffic was moved to the new southbound overpass. Once the old southbound bridge is demolished, the middle piece of the new overpass will go up.
Then northbound traffic will shift to the new overpass, the old northbound bridge will be leveled and the final section of the new overpass will be built.
Sounds kind of complicated, but at least two lanes of traffic in each direction will be maintained throughout the duration of the work.
True, there are some delays. Like this morning, southbound traffic began to back up two miles from the exit.
Some of the delay is due to drivers staying in the right lane, which becomes the exit lane, until the last minute and cutting into traffic, causing the brake-light domino effect.
An orderly merge is something that just doesn’t happen in these parts.
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Comments
By jeremy
May 11, 2007 8:48 AM | Link to this
“Some of the delay is due to drivers staying in the right lane, which becomes the exit lane, until the last minute and cutting into traffic, causing the brake-light domino effect.”
Well, at least you used the qualifier “some.” The real problem is in the merge management. During high season the Turnpike went from 3 to 2 lanes through the construction zone and then the southbound merge once again generated the third lane, allowing for an orderly transition and only minor backups.
Now, with traffic shifted to the new overpass, the Turnpike goes from 3 to 2 lanes, but also merges southbound traffic into only 2 lanes long before again widening to 3 lanes.
While I don’t care for the people that jet up the right lane until a half mile before Atlantic, it is a valid third lane until about a half mile before the exit.
The real problem is the project didn’t have the commonsense, or more likely the funding, to extend the southbound entrance ramp until after the construction zone. So the Turnpike is packing up as it goes from 3 lanes to 1.5 lanes during rush hour.
The people cutting in after riding up a valid third lane are a very small part of the problem. Really, the only problem is when they try and take it too far, for example past the 1/2 mile sign.
Traffic planning, and funding, are the real culprits making my morning commute 10 minutes longer than it was a few months ago.
By Chuck McGinness
May 16, 2007 4:16 PM | Link to this
Jeremy, you definitely are on the money. I don’t drive the turnpike that often (I’m a I-95 junkie) and when I do it’s usually not during the rush. But I can see the problems caused by the merge on the new overpass.