Voice of Business Blog

Traffic changes are coming to the greater Rochester area and will likely affect you, your employees and your customers. Find out what you can do to ease traffic impacts!

The New York State Department of Transportation is undertaking a project to replace the bridges carrying Interstate 490 over the Erie Canal and Kreag Road in Perinton, Monroe County.

The eastbound bridges – leaving Rochester – will be replaced during the 2025 construction season. The westbound bridges – heading into Rochester – will be replaced during 2026.

Beginning on April 1, one travel lane in each direction will be closed to traffic for the duration of the construction season.

An estimated 50,000 vehicles use the bridges each day, with the highest traffic volumes occurring at peak morning and afternoon commuting hours.

When the interstate is reduced to one lane in each direction, high traffic congestion and travel delays can be expected.

Chances are, some of your customers and employees rely on this route to access your business.

Take Turns at the Merge
During construction, we’re encouraging all motorists to plan for extra travel time and to be patient.

Motorists are also encouraged to find alternate routes when possible. It’s likely that traffic volumes will be higher on those alternate routes as well, so patience and extra travel time will still be a necessity.

Motorists who do travel through the construction zone will be directed to perform a late or “zipper” merge. That means motorists are expected to use both open lanes until they get to the merge point at the beginning of the construction zone. At that point, they should take turns entering the work zone.

Think of it this way: one lane isn’t merging into the other – two lanes are merging into one.

Most of the time, we encourage early merging – moving out of the lane being closed and into the lane that will continue to be open – as soon as work zone signs appear. Because of how closely exits are spaced at this location and expected traffic volume, standard early merging would lead to long lines of traffic on the interstate, potentially blocking entrance ramps and causing traffic backups on local access roads.

Zipper merging will keep the work zone safer and traffic moving more smoothly.

At all other work zones, we continue to encourage early merging.

Steps You Can Take to Help Ease the Pain
As businesses, you can play a role in reducing congestion for your employees and customers.

• Help spread the news about expected traffic delays and how to use a zipper merge.
• Consider allowing employees to have more flexible schedules, if practicable. Standard commuting hours will see more congestion than usual and allowing staff to adjust their schedules – arriving and departing earlier or later - may help alleviate some of that congestion by spreading out the traffic influx over a longer period of time.
• Let your customers and employees know about the project on your own social media channels, through posters in staff break rooms and public areas, on your website or through other means of communication.

We are undertaking a comprehensive public outreach campaign, including social media and radio ads, billboards, and more. We can advise the public about traffic, but we can’t necessarily reduce the number of vehicles traveling through the area during rush hours. Your assistance is essential to keeping roads in the Rochester area safe!

Access our online toolkit, which includes social media graphics and text, posters, and draft text for employee emails and notifications. Are there important assets you need that aren’t included in our toolbox? Let us know!

Learn more at ny.gov/zippermerge or contact DOTCommunications@dot.ny.gov.