Mineola Hill Truck Climbing Lanes: Progress Speeds Up On I-70

Fixing I-70's Largest Bottleneck

The ESS Team, composed of Emery Sapp & Sons and design partner Bartlett & West, was one of three design-build teams competing for the contract to build the Mineola Hill Truck Climbing Lanes Design-Build Project. The teams were challenged to provide MoDOT with the optimum solution to fixing I-70’s largest non-urban bottleneck of heavy freight traffic within the $14.4 million budget.

“The project’s primary purpose is to construct eastbound and westbound truck climbing lanes near Mineola Hill to enable traffic to flow more safely and efficiently and to replace the bridges within the project limits to replace existing deficient structures,” explained MoDOT Project Director Brandi Baldwin in a recent press release issued by MoDOT.

The new climbing lanes on Interstate 70 in Montgomery County at Mineola Hill are completed and open to traffic. A third lane has been added to both east and westbound I-70 near mile marker 170 at Danville. The climbing lanes were constructed on the inside so passenger vehicles could easily merge in and out allowing the large, slower moving freight vehicles to remain in their original driving lanes. This provided a much faster traffic pace through the corridor. Work on the next phase of the project continues!

ESS’ original completion date was targeted to be August 22, 2021 but our crews have been working diligently at an incredible pace. The ESS Team committed to complete four out of five segments of the Mineola Hill project in 2020, and we are proud to say that we are over a month ahead of schedule!

Matt Oesch, Project Manager shared that, “This project is a big deal because it is part of this big grant to improve I-70 traffic here in central Missouri. It’s showcasing our ability to complete highly technical and complex projects at an accelerated pace. The Mineola Hill project is also positioning ESS to better leverage our experience on future design-build projects associated with this same grant. We are working hard to finish strong, and expect to complete the remainder of this project ahead of schedule.”