New I-264 ramps at London Bridge to open this week

VIRGINIA BEACH

By Wednesday morning's rush hour, green tarps will be removed from the exit signs, concrete barriers will be gone and thousands of motorists will be cruising new Interstate 264 ramps at London Bridge Road.

It's all happening eight months early and under budget.

"It was a pretty smooth job from start to finish," said Matt Sutton, assistant superintendent with Waterfront Marine Construction, the Virginia Department of Transportation's contractor on the $9.4 million job.

"We decided to hit that one hard and get that one behind us so we could move on to other projects," he said. "It was a lot of Saturdays and a lot of overtime and cooperation from some good subcontractors."

VDOT spokeswoman Brooke Grow added that there were few, if any, of the typical construction delays related to weather, material delivery, staffing or inspections.

The full cost won't be known for another month after smaller tasks like fencing and landscaping are finished, but both VDOT and the contractor say the project will come in under budget. VDOT already had spent $6 million on engineering, right-of-way and utilities.

The new ramps, which will carry traffic from I-264 east to London Bridge Road and from London Bridge to I-264 west, will open in the early morning hours Wednesday. The new exit is less than a mile east of the Lynnhaven Parkway interchange and is numbered 19C.

Motorists now have no direct access from the highway to London Bridge or Great Neck roads and must use the Lynnhaven interchanges instead. About 50,000 vehicles a day use the Lynnhaven ramps.

As a result, traffic often stacks up on the interstate at that exit ramp in the afternoons. And in the mornings, the double turn lanes on Great Neck Road at Virginia Beach Boulevard and on Virginia Beach Boulevard at Lynnhaven Parkway are jammed with vehicles heading toward the interstate ramp.

The new interchanges will allow motorists heading to and from the London Bridge and Great Neck areas to avoid winding through city streets. The exit ramp ends at London Bridge Road, and motorists can turn right toward Oceana Naval Air Station or left to Great Neck Road. The on-ramp takes motorists under the interstate before looping onto I-264.

The new ramps are expected to reduce traffic volumes at the Lynnhaven interchange by 32 percent by 2032.

The project included adding a traffic signal on London Bridge Road, which means three lights in a fairly short distance. Traffic engineers will be on site and in the city's traffic control room the first few days to monitor and tweak the signal timing so that vehicles move through with the fewest delays.

The London Bridge Road project is the first new interstate interchange in Hampton Roads since the Busch Gardens Interstate 64 ramps were built on the Peninsula almost 10 years ago. The new ramps are the first part of a two-phase project that includes reconfiguring the Lynnhaven interchange; that's not scheduled because of a lack of funding.

Debbie Messina, 757-446-2588, debbie.messina@pilotonline.com