State DOT Opens Bids on Ambitious Binghamton Project

Reconstruction of State Route 17 and I-81, Including 9 Bridges, to Begin This Fall

ALBANY, NY (09/15/2011)(readMedia)-- New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) Commissioner Joan McDonald today announced the apparent low bidder for the most ambitious highway improvement project ever undertaken in the City of Binghamton, Broome County, New York.

L & T Construction of Richmondville, Schoharie County, is the apparent low bidder for a three-mile long highway construction project knows as Prospect Mountain Phase I. The company bid $134,685,904.42 for the construction contract. Ten companies bid competitively for the job, with bids ranging up to a high of $156,696,925.80.

"We're pleased to be moving forward on the Prospect Mountain project, the largest capital improvement we're undertaking upstate this year," Commissioner McDonald said. "This project will enhance mobility and improve safety at one of the state's major crossroads, helping to ease highway travel and support economic development throughout the region."

The Prospect Mountain project will reconstruct the convergence of State Route 17 and Interstate 81 with nearby I-88. It also will help bring an eight-mile section of Route 17 up to interstate standards. This interchange was designed in the mid-1960s to handle 35,000 vehicles per day and now averages twice that.

The project will improve traffic flow at the interchange, constructing nine new bridges and reducing or eliminating potential points of vehicle conflict throughout the length of the project along Route 17 and Interstate 81. The bridges, four of them over the Chenango River, replace 1960s-era structures with ones that meet contemporary design standards, widening the bridges and their highway shoulders. Seven of the bridges will replace existing structures, with an additional two new ones to be built at the partial interchange that will replace the Mygatt Street exit off Route 17.

Short distances between three interchanges at this location cause motorists to perform unsafe weaving movements. A second phase of the project is expected to be let in 2015, eliminating weaving movements at the intersection of State Route 17 and Interstate 81.

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