Crews are scheduled to start melting strips of thermoplastic into the fresh pavement atop a new Leavenworth County Road 1 beginning today.

Once that striping is complete — by the end of the week, weather permitting — traffic will be free to drive unimpeded for the entire 5.62 miles between the intersection with U.S. Highway 24-40, just south of Tonganoxie, and the intersection with Kansas Highway 32, west of Linwood.

Rex Fleming, project engineer for the Kansas Turnpike, said that the road’s wider lanes, roadside shoulders and safer driving profile would be ready for all traffic, once appropriate lane markings were in place. The turnpike’s new Tonganoxie-Eudora interchange, meanwhile, should be open by the end of the year.