What Happened
Starting the week of July 13, 2026, drivers in the towns of Hempstead, Babylon, and Brookhaven will face overnight lane closures on two of Long Island’s busiest roadways. Newsday reported Saturday that the New York State Department of Transportation announced the closures in separate news releases, citing pavement renewal and bridge maintenance work as the reasons for the shutdowns.
On Sunrise Highway, the closure will take out two eastbound lanes along the stretch between the Wantagh State Parkway in Hempstead and County Line Road in Babylon. That segment will begin closing on Sunday, July 13, from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. The closures will continue every night at those same hours — with the exception of Friday and Saturday nights — for approximately the next four weeks. NYSDOT said the work is intended to “facilitate a pavement renewal project.” Notably, according to Newsday, the agency did not include any information about a detour route in its announcement, leaving drivers to plan alternative routes on their own.
Further east, a separate closure will affect the Long Island Expressway at Exit 62 in Brookhaven, where westbound lanes will be shut down at the interchange with Nicolls Road and County Route 97. That closure is scheduled to begin Tuesday, July 15 at 10 p.m. and remain in effect until 5 a.m. Wednesday, July 16. The roadway will then close again during the same overnight window — Thursday, July 17 at 10 p.m. through 5 a.m. Friday, July 18. Drivers who need to travel that route will be redirected onto the North Service Road during both closure windows. NYSDOT described the purpose of the LIE work as efforts to “facilitate highway and bridge maintenance.”
The agency cautioned in both announcements that weather could change the construction timelines for work on both the LIE and Sunrise Highway, meaning any of the scheduled closures could be postponed or rescheduled depending on conditions.
Location & Road Context
Sunrise Highway is a major east-west arterial connecting Nassau and Suffolk counties, and the two-eastbound-lane closure between the Wantagh State Parkway and County Line Road spans a heavily traveled section crossing the Nassau-Suffolk border. The Long Island Expressway (I-495) at Exit 62 in Brookhaven is a critical node in the mid-Suffolk highway network, where Nicolls Road (County Route 97) serves as a primary north-south connector between the LIE and Montauk Highway. The LIE alone has logged 1,603 recorded incidents in the Long Island Traffic database, with multiple crashes reported on I-495 as recently as July 11, 2026 — underscoring how even brief overnight lane reductions can compound risk on an already busy corridor.
Broader Impact
The four-week duration of the Sunrise Highway pavement work, running Sunday through Thursday nights, will have a cumulative effect on late-night commuters and commercial traffic that regularly uses the eastbound lanes between Hempstead and Babylon. Because NYSDOT has not announced a designated detour for that stretch, drivers should proactively identify alternate routes — such as the Southern State Parkway or Merrick Road — before the Sunday night start. For the LIE closure near Exit 62, the North Service Road redirect is in place, but motorists approaching from the west should account for added congestion at that interchange on Tuesday and Thursday nights.