Drivers who regularly use Reserve Street in Missoula for their commute will probably want to use an alternate route this week, as Montana Department of Transportation crews make some emergency repairs.

Those repairs mean one lane of the busy road will have to be closed, forcing northbound traffic into a single lane.

MDT announced Tuesday afternoon that crews will be working on the concrete, which is the primary surface of the road, this week between South 7th Street West and South 5th Street West.

MDT is expecting it will take approximately one day to make the repairs, which are scheduled to start Wednesday morning at 7 am, and last all day. The state hopes the repairs can be finished and the road reopened to traffic by 5 pm.

Last week, MDT also had to close one lane of North Reserve, which included this lane. But that extended all the way from 3rd Street West north to South 7th Street West.

MDT says drivers should be prepared for delays because of the long closure of one lane with reduced speeds to keep workers safe through the construction zone.

As usually happens on Reserve, that closure is likely to cause congestion that will continue north of the construction zone as well.

North Reserve Street had extensive reconstruction and extensive work done in the summer of 2020. That also involved concrete work and other repairs but was for a five-mile stretch north of the Clark Fork River, between Mullan Road and the Grant Creek interchange.

The highway was constructed in the mid-1990s.

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