MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – Drivers will have to wait another year before there's any relief from the construction that's plagued traffic at the 836/826 interchange for nearly five years.
"It's a nightmare to tell you the truth," one driver said of the project that never seems to end.
"Never finish, it's only (the) bridge, bridge and everything else, very bad," said commuter Patricia Ramos.
From the air the 836/826 interchange looks like a bowl of spaghetti but despite years of construction, lane shifts and detours, it's still only half-cooked.
"I understand that it can be frustrating driving through here at times," said project spokesman Oscar Gonzalez.
One day the interchange will be a smooth-flowing maze of new bridges and ramps that will allow drivers to move freely in any direction between these major highways. But drivers want to know -- when will it be done?
"Like a hundred years maybe?" commented a frustrated woman pumping gas near the interchange.
Construction started in 2009. Since then Miami-Dade County built Marlins Park, the entire stretch of Interstate 595 was expanded, crews built a tunnel under Government Cut to PortMiami and Thursday the new 9,000-foot runway will open at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International.
"There's 430,000 vehicles that travel through this interchange every day," Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez explained it's taking so long because crews are doing their best to keep commuters moving in an area where 45 new bridges are being built.
"Now if we were able to close three or four lanes during the day, that would obviously speed up the project, but that wouldn't do our commuters or our business people, the people that move cargo, that wouldn't do them any good," said Gonzalez.
Gonzalez said crews are taking a two-level intersection and making it five-level intersection. At the top, drivers will be about 100 feet in the air and the view from up there feels like you're on final approach to Miami International Airport.
For now, motorists are stuck in a holding pattern but Gonzalez said the $560 million project is about 80 percent complete and still on schedule. It's slated to be done by late 2015.
"And by the time they're done, they're going to have to do construction again," said Gonzalez.
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