BANGOR, Maine — The Maine Department of Transportation found strong early support for a proposed overhaul of Interstate 95’s Hogan Road interchange during a small public information session Thursday night at Eastern Maine Community College.
The state wants to redesign Exit 187 as a “diverging diamond interchange.” It would be unique in Maine, and one of about 66 built in the United States since 2009.
A group of about a dozen residents, joined by a handful of city officials, backed the concept but had a lot of questions about how the project would come together.
The area around the Hogan Road bridge, which passes over I-95, is rife with accidents. It’s home to a trio of high-crash locations that combined for 94 collisions in the latest three-year period. One-third of those crashes resulted in injuries. An average of 35,000 vehicles pass through the interchange each day.
The bridge is seldom used by pedestrians or bicyclists, in large part because it’s dangerous. There aren’t any existing sidewalks on the bridge.
The Department of Transportation wants to reduce the number of crashes in the area by 50 percent, prevent traffic backups, and give pedestrians and bicyclists a place to travel safely.
Aside from building a new, larger, very expensive bridge, the only way to accomplish this is a diverging diamond interchange, according to Scott Rollins, the Department of Transportation’s assistant director of planning.
The interchange works by leading traffic to the opposite side of the bridge after passing through the traffic lights. By doing this, cars turning onto and off I-95 ramps don’t cross lanes of traffic, instead merging with the flow of traffic. That reduces the number of traffic “conflicts,” reducing the chances of a crash, Rollins said.
Traffic heading in one direction is allowed to cross the bridge before the the light changes, allowing traffic to flow onto the bridge from the other direction. That two-phase signal is expected to speed up the flow of traffic and prevent backlogs.
A pedestrian and bike lane, protected by a barricade, would be added down the center of the bridge and link up with a sidewalk to be constructed by the city on Hogan Road.
The Department of Transportation expects the project would cost between $3 million and $5 million.
The Hogan Road bridge that passes over I-95, built in 1960, is approaching the end of its useful life. Department of Transportation officials say it’s expected to last another 10 years or more with good maintenance.
“However, we don’t want to wait 10 years to fix the problems with this interchange,” Rollins said.
The interchange would stay in place when the Department of Transportation eventually rebuilds the bridge.
The department doesn’t expect the interchange project to happen until 2018 or 2019. More public support to get the project done early could prompt funding to be released sooner, moving up the timeline, Rollins said.
Officials expect to hold a hearing on the interchange as planning progresses.
For information about the proposal, visit maine.gov/mdot/projects/bangor/ddi.
BDN writer Dawn Gagnon contributed to this report.
Follow Nick McCrea on Twitter at @nmccrea213.