WASHINGTON — As more holiday traffic gets on the road Tuesday, D.C.-area travelers have encountered major delays in Prince George’s County stemming from emergency repairs to patch up a hole that opened up on a bridge on the Outer Loop of the Capital Beltway.
The hole, which opened up early Tuesday morning on the northbound Interstate 95 bridge over Suitland Road, was large enough to cause vehicle damage, the Maryland State Highway Administration said.
The repair work led the authorities to close the right lane of the Outer Loop of the Beltway between Allentown Road and Pennsylvania Avenue.
The closed lane is expected to reopen to traffic between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. Tuesday, Charlie Gischlar, with the highway administration, told WTOP. The agency is now waiting for the new concrete that crews poured to strengthen enough to handle traffic, Gischlar said.
The bridge has been undergoing repairs since July as part of a $37.3 million project to repair the two parallel bridges that carry Capital Beltway traffic over Suitland Road. The 54-year-old bridges are structurally deficient and need to be replaced, the highway administration said.
The highway administration said an estimated 207,000 drivers use this section of the Capital Beltway daily.
The closures come during a busy travel week in the nation’s capital with an estimated 1 million travelers expected to hit the roads for the Thanksgiving holiday.
WTOP’s Anna Isaacs contributed to this report.
