Colorado transportation employees are working to reroute eastbound U.S. 36 in time for rush hour Wednesday morning after a giant crack in the highway turned into a sinkhole.

The Colorado Department of Transportation will reroute eastbound traffic onto two lanes of the westbound side of the highway, Tamara Rollison, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Transportation, said Monday afternoon.

The temporary eastbound lanes will run on what are now westbound lanes, and westbound traffic will be funneled down to two lanes as well, to accommodate the temp lanes for about a half-mile stretch just west of the Church Ranch Boulevard/West 104th Avenue interchange, Rollison said at a Monday afternoon news conference.

Anthony Meneghetti, lead engineer with CDOT on the U.S. 36 emergency repair operation, said Monday that the westbound lanes of the highway have not been compromised by the current collapse. A bridge that carries highway traffic on U.S. 36 over BNSF Railway track has been “disconnected” from the failing road and the bridge is also structurally sound and safe.

“There will be no risk at all to the traveling public,” Rollison said of the upcoming temporary traffic lanes.

In the meantime, drivers traveling between Denver and Boulder need to plan alternate routes.

“Hopefully, we’ll have it up by rush hour Wednesday morning,” Rollison said. “It will be a new configuration until we get eastbound U.S. 36 rebuilt.”

Construction employees are already working on the detour where the road is falling apart between the Church Ranch and Wadsworth Boulevard exits. It’s a big project in a short amount of time, she said.

Construction workers must demolish a concrete wall now separating the eastbound and westbound lanes of the highway. They will then have to build a concrete barrier between the two sides of the highway on the current westbound lanes for a stretch of about a half a mile and then re-stripe both sides, Rollison said.

At first, it’s possible that one lane on the eastbound side of the new diversion will be opened Wednesday morning and then eventually two lanes, she said.

In the meantime, the retaining wall of a U.S. 36 bridge on eastbound U.S. 36 is collapsing in some locations between the two exits. The giant fissure in the middle of the highway turned into multiple large cracks that have now formed a giant sinkhole, Rollison said.

Before the highway reconfiguration is ready, state officials have recommended that drivers use Colorado 93 to West Sixth Avenue, Wadsworth to Interstate 70, and Highway 7 (Baseline Road) to Interstate 25.

Eastbound U.S. 36 must be rebuilt, and it is looking more and more like it will be a major project, Rollison said. Officials are still not ready to estimate how long that could take, she said.

State highway maintenance workers discovered a crack in the highway Thursday night. By noon Friday, a large section of the highway had buckled. On Sunday night, the chasm was widening.