Construction to begin on I-76 West ramp at Roosevelt Boulevard after crash causes traffic headache

Construction on a damaged ramp connecting Roosevelt Boulevard to I-76 West is set to begin on Friday, according to transit officials.

The highly traveled ramp was closed Tuesday afternoon after a large truck hauling a temporary storage container crashed into the structure.

Officials with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation said construction would begin at 9 a.m. Friday and last through 4 p.m. Saturday.

The ramp is to reopen sometime Saturday evening, PennDot officials said.

In the meantime, motorists looking to travel west on the Schuylkill Expressway are directed to take I-76 east, exit at Montgomery Drive, and access the westbound lane there.

A PennDot construction manager suggested that Roosevelt Boulevard travelers looking to access City Avenue take Henry Avenue and travel through Manayunk.

The transit agency’s engineering team met Wednesday morning to survey the damage, which bent three of the ramp’s floor beams and cracked one of its horizontal girders. Repair crews will use heat to straighten the beams and steel plates to repair cracks, according to local construction unit head Harold Windisch.

Windisch had initially anticipated that the bridge would not be reopened by next week.

The project’s advanced timeline comes after construction crews replaced a collapsed portion of I-95 in Tacony with a temporary bridge in less than two weeks in June. The damage came after a large gasoline tanker crashed into the structure, igniting and scorching the lanes above the impact site.

Originally expected to take months, the quick fix along the high-traffic interstate corridor came after robust state and federal support aided round-the-clock work by union construction crews.