I-70 down to one lane each way in part of Cooper County

Drivers will have use of one lane in each direction on Interstate 70 for the next month and a half in Cooper County.

Crews with Capital Paving and Construction will work on the Lamine River bridges at the 93 mile marker on I-70 until late August. Drivers will have access to both bridges Tuesday, but traffic will shift to the westbound bridge starting Wednesday, with one lane of travel for each direction. Then, the company will switch traffic to the other bridge at the beginning of August, weather permitting for the work’s progress.

MoDOT resident engineer Aaron Peck said workers will be out both day and night to complete the work, which focuses on restoring the driving surface, as well as some metal work underneath the bridges.

“Their goal is to work as many hours as they can to get in and out as quickly as they can so we don’t impact the traveling public any more than we have to,” Peck told ABC 17 News.

The nearly four million dollar project will almost certainly snare traffic at peak driving times, Peck said. For central Missouri on I-70, those times include Thursday, Friday and Sunday afternoons. Sensors are installed around the work zone as part of an “Intelligent Work Zone,” said Peck. The sensors will read traffic counts and speeds of cars to measure how long delays may take at the bridges. That data gets passed along to MoDOT, who will alter the electronic message boards leading up to the work zones with that information.

“Primarily for this project, what we’ll be doing is using that information to let travelers know how far ahead of them they can expect to encounter either slow traffic or stopped traffic,” Peck said.

While MoDOT has no established detours for the work, Peck suggests westbound drivers take Highway 41 north of the project at exit 98, while eastbound drivers take the Marshall Junction at exit 78 to get around the work. Highway 50 also serves as an east-west running highway for commuters south of I-70, Peck added.