By Sam Elliott

Officials from the Indiana Dept. of Transportation along with project leadership from design and construction firms welcomed members of the public to Hamilton Southeastern High School April 21 for a community open house to present the upcoming work on Interstate 69 as part of Indiana’s Major Moves 2020 program.

Construction was scheduled to begin April 26 as workers with Milestone Contractors began patching and resurfacing existing pavement on I-69 between State Road 37 (Exit 205) and Campus Parkway (Exit 210).

Whether permitting, motorists can expect overnight single-lane closures in both directions between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. Two lanes will remain open in each direction during peak daytime travel times.

The speed limit on I-69 through the work zone will be reduced to 60 mph and further reduced to 50 mph when workers are present.

The project’s community meeting presented new details on the construction, new noise barriers and an unique interchange design coming to Exit 210.

“Our design-build team had some room for some innovation,” Project Team Leader with United Consulting Matt Taylor said. “We put on our engineer caps and came up with the best way to design and build this project, which is essentially adding a traffic lane to I-69, reconstructing the Exit 210 interchange, improving drainage along the corridor, installing sound walls along the corridor and minor improvements at the State Road 13 interchange are going to allow for additional vertical clearance on the new bridge and our team came up with the most cost effective way to do that.”

The Exit 210 portion of the project will see its Campus Parkway bridge over I-69 widened while building Indiana’s third — and just approximately 60th nationwide — double-crossover diamond interchange.

The interchange style is fairly new and designed to improve an interchange’s traffic. Work is scheduled to begin after July 4 and take one year to complete.

“Our initial analysis is that the interchange is going to work better once that configuration is put in place than it does today while it’s under construction, which we think is a really exciting thing for that interchange,” Taylor said.

Along I-69 near Exits 210 and 214, four new noise barriers will be installed near Cumberland Crossing and Cumberland Woods east of Cumberland Road, Brooks Chase east of Brooks School Road, Roselake east of Stare Road 13, and Whispering Woods north of 126th Street.

Bridges included in the project at Brooks School Road and County Road 650 West are contractually obligated to only receive work while school is out for the summer. It’s expected that construction will come next summer.

For more on the project, visit in.gov/indot/3440.htm.