The warm weather Lehigh Valley motorists may be yearning for also promises significant road-work headaches during the 2014 construction season.

The tiresome Route 22 MacArthur Road interchange reconstruction should be completed this spring, and a similar reconfiguration of the Fullerton Avenue interchange to the east won't get started until next year, the latest transportation plans show.But major improvements to the Interstate 78/Route 412 interchange, and the widening of Route 412 between there and Sands Casino in Bethlehem, will continue to fray motorists' nerves this year and possibly most of 2015.Elsewhere, the ongoing completion of the American Parkway will slow traffic through spring 2015 on both sides of the Lehigh River in Allentown, while a new bridge across the river is completed.Also in Allentown, the $20 million rehabilitation of the century-old Albertus Meyers Bridge (carrying Eighth Street across Martin Luther King Drive and Little Lehigh Creek) will get underway in a few months, snarling traffic not long after last year's completion of the city's new 15th Street Bridge.Only one lane of northbound traffic will be allowed on the three-lane Meyers Bridge during the 21/2-year work period through fall 2016, according to plans. Southbound motorists will have to find alternate routes; the recommended detour most likely will be Lehigh Street, PennDOT spokesman Ron Young said.One sidewalk will remain open on the bridge during the work, PennDOT says.The reconstruction and widening of the Route 33/Freemansburg Avenue interchange is expected to get underway in fall 2014 and finish in 2016.The rehabilitation of the Route 611 Bridge over Bushkill Creek in Easton also is scheduled to begin this fall, after completion of ongoing repairs to the Route 22 Toll Bridge. The Bushkill Bridge job will take about a year to finish, according to plans.Looking a bit farther down the road, the Tilghman Street Bridge in Allentown is scheduled for a long-awaited reconstruction beginning in summer 2015, a project expected to finish by the end of 2016.Weather, environmental reviews and other variables can, and often do, alter these preliminary construction-date estimates.Other Lehigh Valley projects also are being considered for construction starts this year, according to a preliminary list. These include:The resurfacing of Route 33 from Route 512 to the Monroe County line; installation of a high-tension cable median barrier on Route 378 between Bethlehem and Route 22; replacement of the Ackermanville Bridge on Route 191 south of Bangor; the Sixth and Seventh street railroad crossings in Emmaus, and traffic-signal synchronization and improvements on Easton's Northampton Street between Seventh and 15th streets, and on Lehigh Street in Allentown between Eighth Street and 31st Street/Oxford Drive.And as always, Lehigh Valley motorists will face hundreds of municipal road repairs and improvements while enjoying the warmth of construction season 2014.Distributed by MCT Information Services