LITTLE ROCK — The work on the Interstate 430/630 interchange that state highway officials dubbed “Big Changes at Big Rock” officially begins winding down this morning with - of course - another series of lane closures.
The changes begin at 6 a.m., when motorists can expect a series of lane closures that will leave only one lane open on Interstate 430 north between Colonel Glenn Road and the interchange for 12 hours.
The Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department said motorists should expect delays as workers re-stripe the lanes and shift the northbound lanes back to their original and final position. Once the lane shift is complete, the two loop ramps that have been closed all week will be reopened, the department said.
All those moves will set up the final lane shift on Wednesday when the I-430 south lanes will be shifted back to their original and final position.
Weather in the form of lightning or high winds could affect the schedule, however.
Friday evening, the National Weather Service was predicting a 30 percent chance of rain on Sunday. Department officials say they will know more about the timing early next week.
Still, the agency expects the accelerated work schedule to hang steel beams on the interchange’s new flyover ramps to finish well before area schools open for the fall term, when increased traffic can be expected through the interchange.
“The good news is that we will be wrapping up this work before school starts, and that was the goal,” Scott Bennett, the department’s director, said in a news release Friday. “We simply ask for the motorists’ patience for just a few more days.”
Wednesday’s expected finale will be the culmination of a series of seven lane shifts that primarily affected traffic on I-430. It was the third time this summer motorists had been asked to alter their travel routines, but this phase was the longest in duration and had the most significant impact, state highway officials said.
The accelerated work involved the hanging of more than three dozen steel beams by roughly 100 contractor employees working eight-hour shifts around the clock for a scheduled 20 straight days that began July 19. Preparation for that phase of the $125 million interchange redesign began a year ago, said Randy Ort, a department spokesman.
“The amount of preparation that the contractors put into this was amazing,” he said. “When you talk about ordering the steel, fabricating the steel, scheduling the delivery, in what directions the trucks came, where the vehicles were parked. All of this had to be orchestrated.”
Perhaps even more amazing to Ort and other state highway officials is that they know of no “major events” in this period, such as traffic tie-ups or significant crashes in what is one of the busiest sections of the state highway system.
“The bottom line is that to this point, and fingers crossed, it has gone very smoothly,” Ort said.
All the steel beams have been hung, he said. Most of the work now involves tightening the bolts on the beams and removing the large cranes and other equipment from the interchange.
The project is designed to relieve congestion among the roughly 200,000 vehicles that use the interchange daily and the anticipated 300,000 vehicles per day that will travel the interchange in 20 years, according to department planners.
The department dubbed the project the Big Rock Interchange after workers uncovered a distinctive rock formation weighing about 5 million pounds in the interchange’s southeast quadrant between Baptist Health Medical Center and I-430.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 08/04/2012