Angela Hayes lives in Mason, but works in Okemos. She drives on Okemos Rd all the time.
"It gets pretty packed around here so commuting from home to work is probably going to be a little bit longer," Hayes said.
The Ingham County Road Commission has shut down one Southbound lane on Okemos Rd bridge over the Red Cedar River. It will have to shut down the other, move Southbound traffic into Northbound lanes an divert Northbound traffic onto Hagadorn. The commission is asking drivers to find alternate routes.
"It will be interesting to figure out but I know when they did some construction farther down on Okemos Rd, I had to kind of reroute already," Hayes said. "I guess there are other ways to get to work and things."
The construction will replace rusting steel beams. The commission says a routine inspection found they were deteriorating and needed to be fixed this year.
"I know that there have been issues with bridges in the past in other locations," Hayes said. "So maybe it is a good thing that they're getting it fixed up and making sure it's safe."
The Ingham County Road Commission says the construction they're doing is really just a temporary fix, and in five to ten years they'll need to replace the entire bridge.
This year's construction will take until about mid-June. Until then, drivers say it's already slowing down traffic. "It was a little slow, so you keep yourself looking at the road, trying to do the right thing, and try to get as fast as you can to your final destination," Elise Andrews said.
