Twelve days.
It took just 12 days to erect temporary lanes to reopen Interstate 95 in northeast Philadelphia after portions of the highway collapsed.
The highway was badly damaged when a tractor trailer carrying as much as 8,500 gallons of gasoline flipped and caught fire — northbound lanes between exits 30 and 32 were destroyed and southbound lanes were so badly damaged, they had to be demolished. The truck’s driver, Nathan Moody, was sadly killed.
The damage crippled a critical section of highway and initial repair estimates forecast a summer of traffic snarls and headaches. Concerns about the collapse were national — and for good reason: Interstate 95 is part of a network of interstates essential to commerce and travel in the northeast United States.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro initially said he expected repairs would take months. Experts agreed. Early this week, though, Shapiro said he expected the temporary work to be completed over this last weekend.
Less than two weeks after the crash, however, work crews were able to construct and open six lanes of traffic on Friday.
“We showed them what our grit and our determination are all about,” Shapiro said.
Earlier:I-95 reopens Friday weeks after fatal collapse closed highway in Philadelphia
The U.S. Department of Transportation gave both that grit and determination a boost, releasing $3 million just four days after the collapse to fund the start of repairs.
President Joe Biden toured the collapse site on Saturday, June 17, and pledged federal dollars to fund 100% of work done in the first 200 days to repair the collapse — and 90% thereafter.
“I grew up not very far from here,” Biden said. “I know how important this stretch of highway is — not just to Philly, but to the entire Northeast corridor and to my home state.”
Permanent repairs, of course, are still to come. Officials credited the speedy construction of temporary lanes to about 2,000 tons of lightweight recycled glass nuggets to fill in the collapse. Those nuggets, sourced from a Pennsylvania glass recycler, were used rather than materials that would have been more difficult to obtain given ongoing supply-chain delays, officials said.
Work crews and officials alike are to be congratulated for quickly resolving a collapse that might have badly hampered travel during the busiest weeks of the year. The section of collapsed roadway serves 160,000 cars a day — and surely more during the peek summer vacation weeks when tourists move up and down the northeast seaboard.
We are heartened by the speed of the repair, not just for its benefits to drivers and the region’s economy — but also because the repairs demonstrate American capacity to move quickly, even after a disaster, to salvage critical infrastructure. We can still do great things in this country — and this repair demonstrates that.
