(WXYZ) — Drivers who depend on I-275 are already sick of dodging orange barrels.
"Oh it's terrible," driver Shane Grzymala said.
Driver Katie Murphy says she drives on I-275 five days a week.
“Takes me a different way to work every single day. Definitely a lot of traffic. Takes me an hour to get there," she said.
But it’s about to get worse because soon I-275 will be brought down to one lane in both directions.
“That’s terrible," driver Katie Fallat said. "It’s already a headache with two lanes, one lane is going to be a disaster.”
More work is kicking off between 6 Mile and Eureka. At 9 a.m. on Wednesday, the southbound lanes of I-275 will go down to one lane. At 6:30 a.m. on Thursday, the same thing will happen on the northbound lanes.
"That is just terrible. I don’t know what is going to happen, but my drive is not going to be good,” driver Steve Bossidis said.
Drivers will have only one lane open in both directions until mid-December. When traffic does go down, it will likely create slow-moving traffic, as well as a headache for drivers. But the good news is that traffic is going to be shifted onto the northbound lanes so that the southbound lanes can be reconstructed. The work is much needed.
According to the Michigan Department of Transportation, the almost 50-year-old concrete is deteriorating, but MDOT says the work is 55% done.
“I’m just hoping that the traffic moves smoothly and we can be done with it," driver Katie Fallat said.
