By Rachel Lippmann, KWMU
St. Louis, MO – Winter weather and the approaching Christmas season made it another abnormal commute today, the second day of the eastern half of the I-64 reconstruction. Traffic volume was off about 20 percent.
Missouri Department of Transportation district engineer Ed Hassinger says most of the travel problems were again weather-related. Traffic patterns stabilized much faster after the western half shut down last January, Hassinger said, but the winter weather and the holidays will keep them in flux for the next two weeks.
"Once we get to the first of the year, maybe things will get back to normal a little bit," he said. "So we're planning that we're going to have to do this type of traffic management well into the beginning of next year."
Officials say they did see congestion in the expected areas, even with lighter than normal traffic. That again included Forest Park Parkway.
City streets director Todd Waelterman says they were able to add a couple of seconds to traffic running east-west on the Parkway - but north-south traffic on Skinker started to back up today.
"So ultimately we'll have to take a little time away from Forest Park to keep the Skinker run running, because the north-souths, there's a limited number of them. We have Big Bend out in the county, and Skinker," Waelterman said.
Waelterman said Page and Manchester roads are good alternatives to Forest Park. Officials say anyone going all the way west or east on the I-64 corridor should take the other interstates.