This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.

JOHNSON COUNTY, Kan. — The Kansas Department of Transportation is making changes after several nights of backups on Interstate 35. Traffic from construction between Johnson County North to downtown Kansas City has been so bad there were reports of drivers going the wrong way on the highway just to try to get out of the gridlock.

Saturday Lenexa Police tweeted…

The problem area has been where Highway 69 merges with I-35, a heavily travelled stretch of highway with as many as 150,000 drivers per day. All those lanes from two highways having to merge into a single lane created the traffic nightmares.

Monday KDOT announced it would only do the construction on weeknights and they were adding signs on other roads like 435 to warn drivers to consider alternate routes.

Drivers still encountered delays Tuesday night.

“I went on a date, went down to Kansas City, lo and behold I was stuck in traffic 25 minutes at least, it took forever,” Franco Gutierrez said.

Gas station attendant Trent Minnick says drivers have walked to the BP where he works in search of a gas can.

“It seems like they are constantly running into problems, it’s super slow when I leave here at night it seems like it’s a ball field of lights it’s crazy.”

KDOT told us there was some miscommunication with the contractor and they were never notified traffic was going to be reduced to one lane Tuesday, so social media and news alerts didn’t go out.

“I get customers coming in all the time saying they are hot red because there is no way North they are coming here asking for alternate routes all the time,” Minnick said.

So KDOT has directed the construction crews to never reduce traffic to a single lane on that stretch of I-35 North, unless it’s after Midnight. It can go down to two lanes starting at 8 p.m. They are also considering adding even more digital warning signs on nearby roadways.

Crews are patching portions of the highway, then adding four inches of asphalt to the 10-mile stretch to downtown. It should be done by October in hopes of preventing many of the potholes from forming this Winter.