Kelly Drive closures planned in August for resurfacing work
Portions of the road will be closed on weeknights between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m.
Sections of Kelly Drive will soon be closed overnight for planned resurfacing work.
The closures will begin Monday and run through Aug. 29 on weeknights for milling and paving, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation announced Wednesday.
“Significant backups and delays will occur,” the statement notes, and drivers traveling in the area should allot extra time, the department advises.
Two sections of Kelly Drive will be closed from the hours of 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., one after another. While the closures will happen between Monday and Aug. 29, exact dates for each section have not been shared.
The first will be a stretch from Ridge Avenue to Fountain Green Drive. Vehicles looking for an alternative route should use Ridge Avenue, 33rd Street, Diamond Drive, Reservoir Drive, and Fountain Green Drive, according to PennDot.
The next closure will be a section from Reservoir Drive/Strawberry Mansion Drive to 25th Street.
Vehicles looking to get to Kelly Drive should use Reservoir Drive/Strawberry Mansion Drive, Diamond Drive, 33rd Street, Girard Avenue, 29th Street, Pennsylvania Avenue, and 25th Street.
Once the milling and paving work concludes, more closures will follow in the same stretch of Kelly Drive between Ridge Avenue and 25th Street in order to repair inlets and manholes. Final paving will occur after that.
Periodic daytime closures will take place as needed for the repair work, most likely starting in early September, and will take up to three weeks if weather cooperates, said PennDot spokesperson Brad Rudolph.
Final paving could start in mid- to late September, and should take six to eight nights to complete, Rudolph said.
The work on Kelly Drive is part of a larger project to pave and repair state highways in the Philadelphia area spanning over 200 miles.
Kelly Drive has a high rate of traffic deaths and serious injuries, according to data from PennDot from 2014 to 2018, which ranked it among the 12% of roads where 80% of those kinds of incidents occur.
In 2023 the speed limit on Kelly Drive was reduced to 25 mph from 35 mph in an effort to reduce accidents.