Lane swap on deck for Fred Road overpass

Pending a materials test, bridge repair crews working on the east-bound lanes of the Fredericksburg Road overpass bridge will move their work to the inside of the bridge deck this weekend.

In order to accomplish that swap, the highway will be closed between the Fredericksburg Road exit and Huebner Road. The closure is identical to the one over the first weekend of June that allowed work on the bridge to start.

Workers are nearly done with the work on the shoulder and right lanes of the bridge. Traffic will be shifted over to allow work on the median area and left lanes of the bridge, if all goes well, by this weekend.

When the highway is reopened to traffic, crews will be working on the left side of active traffic - around the center median barrier - rather than on the right shoulder area. Lanes will be shifted over to accommodate the work space, with traffic using the new bridge deck surface constructed over the last year.

Daily commuters won't see much of a difference in the way things have been operating over the last month-and-a-half, but there should be some growing pains through the first week.

When the work started, the contractor had 70 days to have all lanes of I-10 restored to normal. To date, only 27 of those 70 days have been used, and the work is nearly halfway done.