ADDISON COUNTY — Work in Middlebury, New Haven and Ferrisburgh on two major Agency of Transportation Route 7 projects will soon be wrapped up for 2016.
According to a Friday email from VTrans spokesperson Stephanie B. Barrett, the 7.87-mile Route 7 paving project from High Street in Middlebury to just north of New Haven Junction will be complete on Monday, when workers will just be cleaning up for the year. Oct. 4 was the target completion date for 2016’s half of a mostly federally funded, $5.53-million project.
The overall project also includes 10.5 miles from the north end of this year’s project all the way to the Ferrisburgh-Charlotte town line, where it will meet a Route 7 repaving project in southern Charlotte that is still ongoing this fall. The total to be repaved in Addison County will be 18.374 miles.
Next year’s work will include upgrades to the railroad crossing outside of Vergennes in Ferrisburgh, including a gate across the highway, and to the signals at the intersection of Routes 7 and 22A. 
This summer and early fall, New York’s Gorham Group applied to Route 7 a new, three-quarter-inch coat of asphalt, redid striping and created a center-line rumble strip, and performed signal-light and rail-crossing upgrades in New Haven Junction.
Also, work to install a new traffic light at the intersection of Route 7 and Little Chicago Road in Ferrisburgh is all but complete, according to Ferrisburgh Town Clerk Gloria Warden.
Warden said the new lights are up, but are covered, but VTrans officials have said they soon should enter a week or 10 days of a flashing phase that will allow motorists to become accustomed to the light’s presence.
The lights are expected to be fully operational by or close to the project’s Oct. 28 target date, Warden said.
The lights will flash yellow during the overnight hours, but otherwise stop traffic on a regular basis, according to VTrans officials.