Continued heavy rain has postponed a detour planned Friday afternoon for repair work to a section of U.S. 76 in White County, the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department said.
The department's spokesman Danny Straessle said officials have not set another date for the detour, but said the postponed work is expected to occur next week.
Crews had planned to repair the highway's shoulder that started to separate from the main travel lanes in a construction zone between mile markers 51 and 55, where traffic has already been restricted to one lane in both directions, Straessle said. Crews would have worked to resurface the shoulder with asphalt.
Straessle said the detour will "most likely" be the same for the next scheduled construction work. Traffic at the Judsonia exit (51) will be detoured onto Arkansas 157, then merged onto Arkansas 367 through Bald Knob, and returned to U.S. 67 at the Bald Knob/Batesville exit (55).
"[U.S. 67 is] an aged highway, [and] this section needs to be repaired so we can keep traffic on it," department spokesman Danny Straessle said. "This one particular section started to suffer under the constant amount of traffic that's there."
Construction crews also worked on the highway Dec. 26-27, and implemented the same detours.
Straessle said the department believed the construction work Friday would have been the final scheduled lane closure and detour to repair the U.S. 67 shoulder.