At a Syracuse City Council meeting, Department of Transportation staff presented a progress update on the I‑81 Viaduct project, describing two phases of work, current contract status and community protections for neighborhoods affected by demolition and reconstruction.

The DOT presenter said phase 1 comprises five contracts to build infrastructure needed to remove the viaduct, including design‑build work in Cicero and DeWitt, Inner Harbor reconstructions and a business‑loop build on the city’s South Side. “We have 2 phases of work,” the presenter said, describing contracts 1–5 and the geographic sequencing that must finish before full viaduct removal.

Contract 1 in Cicero is “mostly complete,” DOT staff said: the interchange is open and operational and remaining minor finish work and a small South Bay Road bridge are scheduled for spring. DOT reported progress on Contract 2’s southern interchange work and roundabouts, and said Contract 3 in the Inner Harbor will fully reconstruct North Clinton Street, replace several bridges and consolidate slip ramps between Court and Bear streets.

DOT said Contract 5 begins the process of bringing the interstate to grade starting at Colvin Street, building a new business loop and a roundabout at Van Buren, and shifting traffic to allow construction of a new entrance into Syracuse. The agency also described planned temporary railroad realignments to keep trains moving while bridges are shifted.

Phase 2 work, currently in design, includes Contract 6 to reconstruct I‑690 from Leavenworth Ave to Irving, remove 690–81 connections and rebuild the West Street interchange. DOT described Contract 6 as roughly 1.5 miles of interstate work (about 15 lane‑miles), reconstruction of 25 local streets, removal of 37 bridges, installation of 28 new bridges, removal of 17 ramps, and multiple signal replacements.

DOT briefed the council on traffic management during construction. Westbound traffic will be maintained; eastbound traffic will require a detour of about a year and a half for the eastern work. County‑scale traffic models that examined roughly 270 intersections show most locations operating at level‑of‑service C or D after project completion, the presenter said.

DOT described environmental and public‑health protections the agency will use during demolition and reconstruction. To limit contamination and dust when structures are dismantled, crews will remove flaking paint inside contained areas (“Class B containment”), use demolition curtains and capture and dispose of material properly. The agency said it is using water trucks to dampen dust, deploying noise and air monitors across the project and distributing tacky mats and tip sheets to residents.

The agency said it is coordinating with the New York State Department of Health on health mitigations and has referred residents who report respiratory issues to a poison control hotline and, if needed, to Syracuse Community Health Center for triage. The presenter said monitoring devices are already in place at multiple neighborhood locations, including near schools and parks.

DOT also highlighted a storm‑separation measure. Contract 6a, removed from Contract 6 for permitting reasons, will install about a mile of new storm trunk line (an 8½‑by‑12‑foot box roughly 20 feet deep) to separate stormwater from combined sewers. “This is going to take out about 85,000,000 gallons of water that’s going to the metro plant a year,” the presenter said, reducing the amount of combined sewer flow that must reach the metro treatment plant.

The presenter detailed workforce and equity commitments: a local‑hire specification attaches to contracts requiring that a portion of work hours be performed by residents living in Syracuse ZIP codes and members of the Onondaga Nation, with a stated local‑hire target of 15% of work hours. DOT reported that since 2023 the project has employed 288 people from the city or Onondaga Nation, of whom 188 were retained continuously and 96 were identified as having barriers to employment.

DOT said it is soliciting community feedback on mural concepts and is exploring use of local artists in coordination with the Public Art Commission; the designs shown in the presentation were described as conceptual. The agency encouraged residents to use an I‑81 Connect app for real‑time notifications about closures and traffic‑pattern changes.

Next steps: final design work on Contracts 7 and 8 will begin soon, with DOT planning more conversations with the city and working groups in the new year; some actions (for example, accepting an East Glen alignment change and turning Kraus and Irving to two‑way) will require future administrative or council actions. The presentation concluded and council members thanked the DOT team.

Sources: presentation and Q&A with DOT staff and councilors during the Syracuse City Council meeting. The DOT presenter supplied the staffing, schedule and metric figures summarized above; where a specific speaker name is not recorded in the transcript, quotes are attributed to the presenting DOT representative listed in the meeting transcript.