Concrete is spread and smoothed over two lanes of the I-69 roadbed Thursday in Daviess County. David Snodgress | Herald-Times
Concrete is spread and smoothed over two lanes of the I-69 roadbed Thursday in Daviess County. David Snodgress | Herald-Times
Parallel concrete strips stretched to the horizon in front and behind, recently laid by a “paving train,” the huge pieces of linked equipment that continuously pour, settle and smooth a two-lane strip of roadway at a time.

Workers in hard hats and yellow safety vests, construction equipment, trucks, and sundry other evidence of a work in progress dotted the landscape.

This was I-69 in Daviess County, where much of the task of building the highway many thought they’d never see is close to wrapping up — at least for the stretch from Evansville northeast to Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center.

Indiana Department of Transportation project manager Brian Malone, an engineer whose assignments have included several of the bridges and overpasses along the route, said Thursday about 13 days of paving remained before both north- and southbound lanes are finished from Evansville to the I-69/U.S. 231 interchange in southern Greene County, just west of Crane. The big machines can lay between 2,000 and 3,000 feet of concrete in a 10-hour day, with the length varying by the distance between the site and the concrete mix plant that fills the stream of dump trucks supplying the train.

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