BATON ROUGE - Crews working on the College Flyover Project have quite an ambitious goal set for Friday night; they're planning to demolish the I-10 WB overpass in just a few hours. 

Starting Friday at 10 p.m., all lanes of I-12 east will be shut down at the I-10/I-12 split as a safety precaution for the work. If everything goes as planned, the roadway will reopen at 5 a.m. Saturday.

Since traffic on I-10 WB was shifted onto the newly-built overpass a few weeks ago, crews immediately began taking apart the old structure to prepare for this demolition. Right now, traffic is passing on the structure that will eventually be a dedicated College Drive Flyover exit. 

Project spokesman Mark Lambert says the removal will not entail a dramatic display of explosions and dynamite, but rather, a smooth transition. 

"Construction crews will be putting some machines in that will actually lift the old overpass once it's fully separated from the roadway and gently pull it out," Lambert said.

Once the structure is taken down, it will be transferred to a laydown yard and the materials from it will be recycled. After that, crews will begin work to build a taller, wider I-10 overpass structure in the same place. 

Once the work is completed, there will be two overpasses side by side, with the one on the left housing traffic for I-10 westbound, and the overpass on the right will only be for drivers exiting to College Drive. The lanes of I-12 eastbound and the newly-aligned I-12 westbound lanes will flow underneath those structures. 

The work to realign I-12 westbound is still underway, but Lambert says it will still be a while before traffic will be adjusted.

"We may be about 4 or 5 major steps down before we can shift the traffic," Lambert said.

If the overpass cannot be removed in one night, crews will repeat the process Saturday night at 10 p.m. and finish Sunday at 5 a.m.