COLOMA, Michigan — One of southwest Michigan's longest-running road projects is in its final days. The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) says all eastbound ramps in the I-94 project area in Berrien County reopened on Thursday, October 29, and traffic has been returned to its original alignment, with every lane of the freeway expected to be open by Friday, November 13.
Source: Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT), Oct 29, 2026
The reopening is not quite the end. Lane closures will continue through November 13 while crews complete median work and the finishing touches — MDOT spokesperson Nick Schirripa told Moody on the Market that over the next two weeks crews will finish median work, take the crossovers down, complete the last paving on the shoulders, put new signs up and clear the barrels. Schirripa said drivers would start to notice the difference immediately now that the eastbound ramps in the Benton Harbor–St. Joseph area have reopened and traffic is returning to normal.
Source: Moody on the Market, Oct 30, 2026
What three years of work actually built
The project rebuilt 8.5 miles of I-94 and four bridges, and repaired nine other bridges, between Puetz Road and Britain Avenue. In the final year of work alone, crews completed repairs to the eastbound I-94 bridge over the St. Joseph River, built the new eastbound bridge over Pipestone Road, and installed new box culverts — the Yore-Stoeffer Drain, Kelly Miller Drain and Palisades Drain — under the eastbound lanes.
Crews also rebuilt eastbound I-94 between the St. Joseph River and Washington Avenue and between Britain Avenue and Pipestone Road, repaved the eastbound lanes from Pipestone Road to the St. Joseph River, and opened a new Niles Avenue entrance ramp onto eastbound I-94 at Exit 27. The work was finished out with sign upgrades, cable guardrail installation, new culverts, ramp improvements and drainage improvements along the eastbound side, MDOT said. The contractors on the job were Rieth Riley Construction, Kalin Construction, and Milbocker and Sons Inc.
Where the money came from — and what it supported
The $204 million investment was funded in part by Governor Gretchen Whitmer's Rebuilding Michigan program, the state's program for rebuilding the state highways and bridges that are critical to Michigan's economy and carry the most traffic, with an investment strategy aimed at fixes that last longer and improve the condition of the state's infrastructure. Based on economic modelling, MDOT said the $204 million is expected to have directly and indirectly supported 2,911 jobs.
Why this stretch of I-94 matters beyond Berrien County
I-94 is the main freeway spine across southern Michigan — the route that carries traffic between Chicago, Kalamazoo, Ann Arbor and Detroit, and onward to the Canadian border crossings at Detroit and Port Huron. The Berrien County stretch, running past Benton Harbor, St. Joseph and Coloma near the Lake Michigan shore, is the first Michigan section long-haul drivers meet after crossing from Indiana, and it carries heavy truck traffic serving farms, wineries, warehouses and factories across southwest Michigan. Three construction seasons of lane shifts, crossovers and ramp closures on that corridor have meant three years of slower, less predictable trips for freight and commuters alike.
Traffic is back on its normal alignment and the eastbound ramps are open, but single-lane closures will continue in the project area — in both directions at times — through Friday, November 13. Expect the remaining delays around median work and shoulder paving, and check MDOT's Mi Drive map before a run through Berrien County.
What it means for Punjabi drivers on the corridor
I-94 through southwest Michigan is a regular run for Punjabi truck drivers working the Chicago–Detroit–Toronto freight triangle, many of them based in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Ontario and crossing at Detroit–Windsor or Port Huron–Sarnia. For those drivers, the end of the Berrien County work removes a long-standing bottleneck at the Michigan end of the run: ramps are back, the crossovers are coming out, and from November 13 the freeway is scheduled to run at full width again — just before winter weather makes this lake-effect corridor harder.
What happens next
MDOT expects to complete the work next week and reopen all lanes by Friday, November 13, which Schirripa described as the tentative open-to-traffic date. After that date the agency says the area will get a break: with this project out of the way, I-94 in this part of Berrien County is not scheduled for another major round of work for a few years. The remaining risk to the November 13 date is the usual one for November in Michigan — weather slowing the final paving and striping — so drivers should treat the date as firm but check Mi Drive for the final all-clear.