Pa. Turnpike begins $90.5 million widening near I-95 interchange in Bucks County
The project is meant to support the I-95 interchange with the Pa. Turnpike, and it also is part of a plan to rebuild the toll road, which opened in the fall of 1940.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission is reconstructing and widening a 2½ mile section of I-276 between the Neshaminy Falls Toll Plaza and Bensalem Boulevard in Bucks County.
Turnpike officials characterize the $90.5 million project as a supporting piece of the massive connection of I-95, a freeway, to the toll road in 2018.
That connection closed the final gap in the Eastern Seaboard’s major interstate, between Florida and Maine’s border with New Brunswick, Canada, after more than six decades.
It made shipping by truck more efficient, reduced congestion on local Bucks County roads, and eased traffic flow through the Philadelphia region and along the East Coast.
“Opening the I-95 connection was a historic milestone, but it was not the end of our work,” Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission chief engineer Brad Heigel said in a statement.
Starting this month, crews will reconstruct the turnpike’s center median to prepare for future traffic shifts, the agency said. Lane closures are expected through October, with work done mostly at night.
Work on this portion of the roadway, called Section C of the I-95 Interchange Project, is expected to continue through 2029.
Construction will proceed in phases:
First, temporary concrete barriers will be installed to establish long-term shoulder closures and create space for tree clearing, earthwork, and other construction activities beginning later in fall.
Crews will then build a new lane in each direction while traffic uses the existing lanes.
Once that is done, traffic will shift onto the new lanes so crews can rebuild the roadway in between. Two lanes of traffic will remain open in each direction in peak travel hours during construction, the turnpike said.
In addition, a new sound-barrier wall will be built, along with a stormwater management facility. The existing Neshaminy Falls Toll Plaza will be demolished and replaced by an Open Road Tolling gantry.
The project will create new “capacity to support safer, more reliable travel through Bucks County and along one of the nation’s most important transportation corridors,” Heigel said.
Work on the adjoining portion, Section D30, is scheduled to be finished this fall, but three-lane turnpike traffic won’t begin in the area until both sections are done.
The project also will add new emergency access gates at milepost 355, cutting response time for local firefighters by 50%.
In June, officials of the Pennsylvania and New Jersey Turnpikes picked their preferred design to replace the 70-year-old bridge over the Delaware River linking the toll roads: a six-lane span about 195 feet north of the existing one.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, the lead agency on the joint project, next must complete an environmental impact study on the design.
Engineers also must study the runner-up approach: constructing the new bridge in stages, about 40 feet north of the existing bridge — over eight years. (The preferred design could be built in four years.)
The Federal Highway Administration is expected to decide in April 2028 which of the two options to use.
When it is built, the I-95 Interchange Project will be done.
