I-69 at 610 by Bellaire will close for next 3 weekends
As forecast, work is heating up at the Interstate 69 and Loop 610 interchange near Bellaire, leading to three weekends of closings starting today.
Crews will close I-69 in both directions at Loop 610, starting at 9 p.m., Texas Department of Transportation officials said. The lanes will reopen by 5 a.m. Monday. Detours will send drivers onto 610, where they will make a U-turn and return to I-69. The closings will repeat May 1316 and May 20-23.
“We’re at the point the work we have is going to have some closings associated with it,” TxDOT spokesman Danny Perez said last week, as officials prepared for a busy for months of construction.
With sizzling temperatures forecast for Houston, the closing is set to get people’s blood boiling. Drivers should expect delays and avoid the area if possible, officials said. Police will direct traffic if needed.
Complicating travel, highway officials said crews also will close the exit from southbound I-69 to Chimney Rock for two months, starting Friday night. Until summer, drivers will be directed to Fountain View, where they can make a U-turn and return to Chimney Rock.
More than four years into rebuilding the freeway interchange — by most measures the worst bottleneck in Texas — workers are moving to one of the most daunting parts of the project: rebuilding main lanes of Loop 610 spanning I-69. To rebuild the lanes, many of the old ramps and supports have to be demolished, necessitating traffic staying off I-69.
The closings are the latest in what has been years of lane shifts and detours for area drivers, and follow the demolition of the ramp from southbound I-69 to southbound 610, which closed last weekend. The new ramp will not open until mid-2024, highway officials said, as one of the last parts of the $270.9 million interchange project.