Alabama is bracing for a busy – and hot – Fourth of July weekend. But one thing you probably won’t have to worry about is road construction.

Barring an emergency, all major interstate roadwork projects in Alabama will pause between noon on Friday, June 30, and midnight on Tuesday, July 4. That’s according to Tony Harris, chief of media and community relations for the Alabama Department of Transportation.

“We will be announcing a shutdown of construction activity during the busiest part of the holiday weekend,” Harris said. “For anything but an emergency lane closure, we’ll have everything opened back up.”

An emergency, he said, would be something like a weather event that damaged a road, a major pothole developing on a busy part of the highway, or other similar events. Barring such an emergency, there won’t be lane closures due to construction on any interstates in Alabama over the long weekend, and many smaller roads will be following the same practices, at region engineer discretion, Harris said.

These kind of roadwork pauses are standard practice during high-traffic holidays, Harris said. They are meant to prevent slowdowns on major roadways, as such slowdowns often lead to accidents.

Still, Alabama travelers can expect plenty of traffic, lane closures or not. Nationwide, holiday travel is expected to reach a record high this year.

Roadwork projects to keep an eye out for

Once the holiday weekend is over, road work will resume. And there are already several construction projects already on the books. According to ALDOT, drivers can expect to see active construction on these projects:

• I-85 north and southbound for bridge replacements in Montgomery County
• Bridge replacement on I-65 over the Sepulga River in Georgiana
• Planned roadway improvements and resurfacing on I-10 in Mobile

Outside of those large projects, ALDOT currently lists 132 active projects on its ALGO Traffic tracker. The map there shows active roadwork, weather alerts, current traffic flows and more. You can see the full map by clicking here.

According to ALDOT, 58 of those construction projects are expected to last past the holiday weekend, and could affect traffic as we move further into Summer.

Do you have an idea for a data story about Alabama? Or questions about Alabama that data may be able to answer? Email Ramsey Archibald at [email protected], and follow him on Twitter @RamseyArchibald. Read more Alabama data stories here.