MONROE — A traffic switch Tuesday night into early Wednesday on I-75 near and north of Monroe signals that Michigan’s $102 million reconstruction project there is nearing its halfway point.

Northbound traffic is back on the freeway’s northbound side between a point just south of the Dixie Highway interchange and a point just north of the I-275 junction.

Traffic remains reduced to two lanes each way through the zone, but Kari Arend, a Michigan Department of Transportation district spokesman in Jackson, said the third lane will likely reopen by about Dec. 8.

“The project as a whole went very well and progressed as designed,” Ms. Arend said Wednesday.

Northbound traffic had been crossed over to the southbound side since mid-summer while the northbound lanes were being rebuilt.

A similar reconstruction of the southbound lanes is scheduled to start in the spring, with southbound traffic using half of the rebuilt northbound pavement during that phase.

Part of the work remaining to be done this year is installation of temporary barrier wall in places where the permanent median needs gaps for crossovers to be used during next year’s construction, Ms. Arend said.

Crews also have to remove barrier wall from the southbound lanes that separated traffic during the northbound lanes’ reconstruction, and there’s other “punch list” cleanup to do, the spokesman said.

The traffic switch early Wednesday was followed by the reopening of Sandy Creek Road, which has been closed at I-75 for replacement of an overpass during the project.

Sandy Creek will close again in the spring when rebuilding the southbound lanes’ bridge starts.

Also back to normal is the northbound I-75 entrance ramp from Nadeau Road. 

Traffic had used a temporary ramp during the northbound lanes’ reconstruction because a creek bridge just north of the interchange precluded setting up a median crossover for the normal ramp.

The 5.6-mile project is the first of what MDOT expects to be five stages of I-75 reconstruction between I-275 and the Ohio-Michigan border. The project will be spread out over more than a decade and is expected to cost between $650 million and $750 million.

The next stage is planned for the five southernmost miles, including a new “gateway” feature at the state line. It’s tentatively scheduled to start in 2019, but none of the later stages has assigned funding.

Contact David Patch at: dpatch@theblade.com or 419-724-6094.

First Published November 27, 2015, 5:00 a.m.