Before you know it warmer weather will be here and road construction will start. If you travel on the eastern side of Sioux Falls, there will be construction impacting you.

The project will involve I-229, 26th Street and Southeastern Avenue . The finished product will include a railroad overpass plus work at the I-229 interchange.

If mother nature allows, you could start seeing work being done to this area of Sioux Falls by the end of March.

“The contractor is hopeful they can start sometime here at the end of March but forecast, frost in the ground, all of those things play a factor in it,” city of Sioux Falls civil engineer, Dena Knutson said.

You’ve probably noticed signs near 26th Street and Southeastern Avenue about the “raise the road” project. They’re planning to raise the intersection 25 feet to 30 feet. By raising the intersection, it will allow trains to pass underneath.

“We will be building a really tall bridge, that starts about where the greenhouse at Leif Erickson is, it will start about there, and then it will go over the railroad track and then the bridge will touch down prior to the southeastern intersection but then the taper will continue on almost to Cleveland Avenue,” Knutson said.

But that’s not all.

“We will be pushing Yeager Road over so it connects right to 26th Street, and then Exit 5 will have its own dedicated lane as it comes up, meets 26th Street and then carries its own lane eastbound on 26th street,” Knutson said.

Knutson says they should have everything open up to traffic by the end of 2020, with a few minor things to be finished up in spring of 2021.