Jun 25, 2008 By Steve Ferris 2 min read

REDSTONE TWP. Workers have already started clearing land to make way for a three-year $66.6-million Mon/Fayette Expressway project that includes twin 1,700-foot-long, 180-foot-high bridges over Dunlap Creek, the contractor said Tuesday. Representatives from New Enterprise Stone and Lime Co., the project contractor from Bedford County, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission and SAI Consulting Engineers, the construction management firm, outlined the project in a meeting in the municipal building.

New Enterprise, which has been working in the township for the last three years on another section of the expressway project, is glad to be working in the township again, project superintendent Ed Keilman said.

“We enjoy Redstone. We very much enjoy Redstone Township and its people,” Keilman said.

One bit of good news for residents, he said, is that this part of the expressway project will not require any road closures during construction.

“There will be no road closings. That’s one nice thing about this project,” Keilman said.

Work on the bridges that would eventually carry the expressway over Dunlap Creek and earth moving will start this year, he said.

A total of 4.3 million cubic yards of earth will be excavated over the course of the project and blasting will start in August or September, he said.

The twin two-lane bridges, one northbound and one southbound, will be completed by November 2011. The largest pedestals that will support the bridges will be 180 feet tall, he said.

“It’s going to be quite a bridge, I tell you,” Keilman said.

The bridges would carry 1,700 feet of 2.3 miles of mainline expressway, which is also part of the project, from Route 166 to Bull Run Road, he said.

They aren’t the only bridges in this section, 51F, of the Uniontown-to-Brownsville part of the expressway project.

A smaller two-lane bridge that would carry Route 166 over the expressway will be completed next year, Keilman said.

That bridge will be built about a mile from the intersection of Route 166 and Route 40.

Also scheduled for completion in 2009, is a relocated section of Simpson Road, which is being severed to clear a path for the expressway.

Simpson Road will end at a cul-de-sac past Hunter’s Ridge and a new section of the road will be build from Route 166 near Davidson Siding Road to the existing part of the road south of Dunlap Creek.

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