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Traffic stoppages planned at Balls Bend

The Route 228 Balls Bend realignment will feed into the road-widening project Middlesex Crossing developers began this summer at the Route 228-Route 8 intersection.

Drivers may have to briefly wait near the intersection of Route 8 and Route 228 this week, as the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has issued a travel alert for the Balls Bend Safety Improvement Project from Jan. 25 and 27.

There will be intermittent traffic stoppages in the area between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., a statement announced, to allow trucks to deliver box culvert sections to the site.

The sections being brought in are large concrete box structures that are typically inserted as part of the construction of bridges, tunnels, streams and underpasses, PennDOT spokeswoman Tina Gibbs said. Moving them into the site will require traffic to temporarily stop.

“What we try to do is if we have to disrupt traffic, especially if it’s both lanes, we try to keep it to a 15-minute-or-less disruption,” she said. “A lot of it depends on the truck getting them into the right locations where they need to drop them in, but for the most part it will be 15 minutes or less. There will be multiple of them as they deliver them.”

Gibbs said the weather may have some impact on the construction, but that this is typical for winter.

“Pretty much any time we have winter projects going on, the standard rule of thumb is it’s all weather dependent,” she said. “Barring anything else rolling through during that time, it’s still weather dependent, but hopefully Mother Nature cooperates a little better for us.”

Larger-scale construction on the Balls Bend project will begin again in the spring.

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