By Adam Allington, KWMU
St. Louis, MO – After eight months of construction, the new Hampton Avenue bridge over Interstate 64 reopened to traffic on Friday.
The Missouri Department of Transportation set a deadline of reopening the bridge by Memorial Day weekend.
Lucie Springmeyer is the CEO of Forest Park Forever and says the bridge is a major access point for park visitors.
"We did a traffic study about a year ago that showed almost 60-percent of the traffic entered the park here at Hampton and by taking that away I think a lot of us found different ways into the park which was good," says Springmeyer.
MODOT District Engineer Ed Hassinger says the new bridge and intersection are much improved over the old design.
"Probably one of the most important things is that we took the multi-use trail out of the intersection and put it in an underpass that takes all that pedestrian, bike, recreation traffic out of the car traffic patterns, so it will be great for Forest Park," says Hassinger.
Hassinger says so far, the I-64 corridor upgrade is on-budget and on-time.
Mainline paving has started in some portions of the stretch. The next major step will be June 1st when the Big Bend overpass will be closed until December.
The entire project is slated to be complete by December 31st.