State transportation officials made it official this morning: The Del. 1 expansion project is done.

But here’s the fine print: the little detail work like painting lines on some travel lanes, wrapping up paving on side roads and planting sod really won’t be finished until Friday.

Even as the project completion was being announced, the turn lane off the highway onto Freeman Highway, the main access road for the Cape May-Lewes Ferry, was closed for paving.

Still Chief Engineer Robert Taylor said residents and visitors can forget the pain from those traffic delays and closed lanes over the last two years and “put that all behind.”

Taylor said the road is unique in Delaware because it includes north-south, travelers, tourists, hundreds of businesses and people riding bicycles.

The new road includes 2.9 miles of newly paved surface and a third travel lane both north and southbound from the Route 9 intersection near Lewes south to Route 24. Beyond that, the highway already has three lanes south to the main entrance to Rehoboth Beach.

The $9.7 million project started in Sept. 2006 and was expected to be finished in time for the Memorial Day holiday weekend. Bad weather in March and April delayed the project completion.

“This was a very challenging project for everyone involved,” Taylor said. “It’s a place people want to be and we knew it would be challenging.”

From the start, transportation officials warned motorists to expect delays.

“DelDOT tested your patience and in some cases just made you flat out angry,” Taylor said.

Carol Everhart, executive director of the Rehoboth Beach-Dewey Beach Chamber of Commerce, said that although the construction period was sometimes painful, the end result is much better.

Because the area is a “drive-to” destination, “we need good roads and good connections,” she said.

State Sen. F. Gary Simpson, R-Milford, who represents the Lewes area, compared the project to an unexpected pregnancy.

“The timing could have been better ... and there were a lot of moans and groans,” he said.

And then, on the eve of the Memorial Day holiday when the project was expected to be complete, “we had to push back that due date just a little bit,” he said.

Simpson said that in the end it turned out well.

“We’ve got something good,” he said.

source: delmarvanow.com