BATON ROUGE, La. – Drivers traveling into Baton Rouge from Denham Springs will be shifted to the westbound span of the new U.S. 190 Amite River Bridge on Friday, Sept. 11, the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) announced today.

Crews are scheduled to finish striping the new bridge early Friday morning, weather permitting. Traffic will begin to be shifted to the new bridge at approximately 9 a.m. The traffic shift is being done to allow the contractor to begin removing the existing westbound span to make room for crews to complete the new eastbound span. Work to begin removing the old bridge is scheduled to begin on Sept. 14 and should finish by mid-November. Drivers traveling eastbound will continue to travel on the existing eastbound span until the new bridge is complete.

This work is a part of a $29.5 million project to construct a new bridge on U.S. 190 over the Amite River. Each span of the new bridge will include two 12-foot lanes, a 10-foot outside shoulder, and a 4-foot inside shoulder. Work on the project began in December 2007 and is on schedule to be complete by December 2010. This section of U.S. 190 serves nearly 26,000 vehicles per day.

For questions or to sign up to receive periodic e-mail updates about the project, contact DOTD’s Customer Service Center at 1-877-4LA-DOTD (1-877-452-3683) or by e-mail at customerservice@dotd.la.gov. The center is open 7 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday through Friday.

You can also follow the U.S. 190 Amite River Bridge Project on Facebook. Once you open a Facebook account, project information can be accessed by entering "DOTD" or "U.S. 190 Amite River Bridge Project" into the search field.