South Whidbey drivers will get a break from the construction delays at Bayview and Highway 525 for the winter months.

The intersection’s stoplight and road widening project is on hold until early spring, when workers will once again be restricting traffic to one lane at a time.

The project, which began this summer, calls for the addition to the intersection of a stoplight, right and left turning lanes, sidewalks, ponds and ditches .

Marlin Lenssen, a project engineer for the Department of Transportation, said a work crew will be back on site next year as soon as the weather turns warm and dry.

“We expect to start work again in the early spring, if it is dry enough,” he said.

He was cautious about naming a completion date, but said that with reasonably dry weather the project could be completed by the end of May or by early June.

“It is very dependent on how much rainfall we get next spring,” he said. “Basically the weather shut us down because we need dry, warmer weather to do the repaving and to pour the concrete for the short radius of sidewalk around the light poles.”

To date, a water collection pond and swale have been built to handle water runoff from the road. The swale is basically a graded, flat-bottomed ditch to the collection pond on the southeast corner of Bayview Road, where the water runs parallel to Highway 525. The pond will act as a natural filtering system once grasses and other plants start growing.

“As the water runs off the road, oil collects on the grass, then is broken down by sunlight,” Lenssen said.

The light poles have been ordered for the project and will be put in place next spring, once the lanes have been widened and paved. It takes about six months to fabricate the poles.

“That’s primarily because they are so few companies that actually build them,” Lenssen said. “They are really booked up.”