BATON ROUGE – It took seven hours for heavy congestion to clear on westbound lanes of I-10, reduced to a slow crawl because of the ongoing lane closures on La. 1 South on the west side of the river.

Westbound traffic exiting onto the southbound highway in Port Allen must merge with southbound traffic on La. 1 to cross the Intracoastal Bridge because of continued repairs to the bridge after a truck crashed into the bottom of it days ago. A temporary traffic light is regulating traffic – allowing more interstate traffic onto La. 1 than surface street drivers headed from Port Allen toward Brusly.

But, the congestion was too much for the temporary solution Tuesday – becoming overwhelming around 2 p.m. Heavy traffic lingered until just after nine Tuesday night – an unusual amount of time for congestion by even Baton Rouge standards.

Congestion on I-10 West in the Baton Rouge area has now cleared.

— Baton Rouge Traffic (@BR_Traffic) March 27, 2019

DOTD said things got out of hand much earlier than usual because of a breakdown in the lane closure area and traffic never recovered.

A police chase came to a crashing end in the traffic on I-10 W near Acadian Tuesday afternoon, too, further plaguing the highway system.

Click HERE to see a live traffic map. Watch live traffic reports weekdays from 5 a.m. - nine on WBRZ and WBRZ+ and at Noon, 4 and 5.

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