New I-10, I-12 College Drive exit ramps to open Wednesday morning
BATON ROUGE - The new College Drive exit ramps from I-10 and I-12 westbound are scheduled to open at 5 a.m. Wednesday, the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development announced.
The new exit ramps will allow drivers to access College Drive from both interstates without weaving through multiple lanes of interstate traffic. This also will be an improvement for interstate drivers going beyond College Drive because they will no longer encounter vehicles that are changing lanes to get to the exit.
The new College Drive exit for I-12 will be just before the I-10/I-12 merge. The new I-10 exit will be on the I-10 flyover bridge above I-12, also just before the merge. Both exits will be on the right-hand sides of the interstates.
Traffic from both exit ramps will merge north of I-10 westbound and will be separated from I-10 traffic by concrete barriers. The lanes at the end of the exit at College Drive already are in final configuration.
DOTD reminds I-10 and I-12 westbound drivers they will only be able to access College Drive from the new exits before the I-10/ I-12 merge. The old I-10 exit between the merge and College will be closed.
Construction crews must install new, permanent barriers along I-10 westbound where the old exit is located. This construction will not impact I-10 westbound traffic, but it will require the left lane of the new, merged exit lanes to be temporarily closed.
That lane closure will begin at the old exit location and extend west for about 1,000 feet. The closure begins Wednesday morning and is expected to last a few weeks.
The Essen Lane onramp to I-12 westbound, which has been closed since February 21, is scheduled to reopen on Thursday morning, contingent upon completion of overhead truss work on Wednesday night.
The new exits are the last major construction component of the College Flyover project. A few remaining tasks, including permanent lane striping, sign installation, and barrier installation, will require ongoing lane closures through the end of the project, scheduled for May 12.
For the latest information on the project, go to www.collegeflyover.com.