The end is in sight for a construction project along Interstate 95 that’s been going on in Connecticut for more than a decade.

The I-95 New Haven Harbor Crossing Corridor Improvement Program saw a major traffic shift over the weekend, with all southbound travel onto the temporary lanes of the new Pearl Harbor Memorial (Q) Bridge. The I-95 southbound traffic shift marks the completion of Stage 2B construction of NHHC and the start of Stage 3 construction, two months ahead of the original schedule, with 68% of the entire project completed to date. The project should be finished in 2016.

The centerpiece of NHHC is the construction of a new, 10-lane Q-Bridge to replace the existing bridge crossing over New Haven Harbor. Constructed in the late 1950s, the original bridge is among the most heavily traveled segments of the northeast corridor between New York and Boston.

The bridge currently accommodates more than 120,000 vehicles per day. The Connecticut Transportation Department expects the new bridge to serve 140,000 vehicles per day by 2015, more than three times the 40,000 vehicles per day for which the original bridge was designed

NHHC is a multi-modal transportation improvement plan and the largest, most comprehensive construction project ever undertaken by the Connecticut Transportation Department. The $2 billion project features public transit and roadway improvements to increase capacity and reduce congestion on I-95 in the Greater New Haven area, including the reconstruction of the I-95/I-91/Route 34 Interchange, and additional lanes along 7.2 miles of I-95 northbound and southbound between Exit 46 in New Haven and Exit 54 in Branford.