Work is scheduled to begin next Monday on installation of Nebraska’s first section of variable speed signs along Interstate 80.
Chris Ford with the Nebraska Department of Transportation District Five office says the installation will start at the Wyoming line and stretch 100 miles to the east, applied to both directions of travel.
Ford tells KNEB News the project is modeled after Wyoming’s variable speed zones, with a goal of improving safety when travel conditions warrant. “They’ve found that by slowing the traffic down, they’re having fewer accidents and fewer rear-end collisions,” says Ford. “We get five or six trucks hit every year on the interstate when we’re plowing snow because we’re going slower than the rest of the traffic, and the closure rates are so great when the trucks are driving 75 (miles an hour). It’s almost always the trucks that are having the problems.”
Watts Electric Company of Waverly has the nearly $3 million contract, which is includes installation of fiber-optic cable along both sides of the interstate and is slated for completion in August 2022.
