People who frequently travel across the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge know how congested it gets around rush hour, but construction projects can also slow down traffic.

Michael Noto, a driver for a Baton Rouge based company says, “I’ve sat on that bridge before for three or four hours.  People playing football, just waiting for the traffic to die down just sitting there.”

A rolling lane closure has been issued to re-stripe the highway from the Whiskey Bay exist to the I-10, I-12 split on Monday from 8 p.m. to 5 am. Motorists traveling at that time are asked to simply drive around the machine as it repaints lines on the highway.

Noto’s advice for traveling the basin-  A full tank of gas and a sense of awareness. “I’m always prone to look at my GPS even though I know where I’m going.  I leave it on all the time because it’s always updating me, telling me a different route I can take.  I usually pull a big trailer so sometimes I can’t take the route if it’s a beaten path.  I try to go by that or call the police and see what’s going on.  It’s terrible.”

Michael Fontenot lives in Baton Rouge but often travels to the hub city to visit family. “When you go from a two lane to a one or whatever it is, a three lane to even a two lane it gets really, really bad. Then everybody decides they want to go from one lane to the other lane which backs everything up.”

And like anyone who wants to avoid the nightmare that is traffic on the basin, he knows the back ways. “Coming from Lafayette you can go up to Opelousas than 190 to Baton Rouge and vice versa.  If you’re coming from Baton Rouge you can go through Lobdell to 190 and back this way.”

Motorists can expect some delays near the Gross Tete exit for the next couple of weekends for railroad overpass repairs.