I-35 closure planned for overpass demolition

In this Friday, Feb. 1, 2013 photo, traffic stacks up on a highway in Dallas. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
In this Friday, Feb. 1, 2013 photo, traffic stacks up on a highway in Dallas. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
In this Friday, Feb. 1, 2013 photo, traffic stacks up on a highway in Dallas. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

By Lowell Brown
Waco Tribune Herald via Associated Press

Construction workers will temporarily close Interstate 35 just south of Bruceville-Eddy on Tuesday night to demolish the Old Blevins Road overpass, the Texas Department of Transportation reported.

All I-35 main lanes will close at Exit 314 from 7 p.m. Tuesday to 7 a.m. Wednesday while workers destroy the bridge, forcing drivers to use frontage roads through the area. Workers closed the bridge Monday ahead of the work, TxDOT spokesman Ken Roberts said.

“The bridge is coming out,” he said. “What will go in is a crossing of the county roads there as an underpass, with I-35 passing over.”

The crossing is tentatively scheduled to open in spring 2014, he said. Until then, drivers will be detoured to the State Highway 7/Farm-to-Market Road 107 crossing at Exit 315 to the north.

The project is part of a larger TxDOT effort to widen I-35 to at least six lanes with continuous, one-way frontage roads from San Antonio to Hillsboro.

The frontage roads at Old Blevins Road are still open to two-way traffic but will become one-way when new frontage roads are built.

A new southbound frontage road is expected to open late this summer, followed by a new northbound frontage road sometime later, Roberts said.