Every road crew with a lane-closure permit on a state highway, bridge, or thruway got the same message this week: stand down for the weekend.

Governor Hochul's office posted a release Friday suspending construction-related lane closures on state routes for Labor Day weekend, covering the stretch from Friday through the holiday itself on Monday, September 7. It's an annual move — Albany does this around every major travel holiday — but it still lands as a hard stop for any DOT or Thruway Authority job with an active closure permit this week.

The logic is simple: holiday traffic and active work zones don't mix, and the state would rather eat a few lost workdays than a pileup on the Thruway. For contractors, that means checking your own permit against the governor's release before you set out a single cone this weekend — the source link below has the specifics for your route.

It also means Tuesday morning is a restart, not a resumption. Crews coming off the moratorium have to re-notify and re-stage under the normal lane-closure process, the same as after any other holiday pause — so don't assume Monday's schedule just picks back up where Friday left off.

The cones go back up once the holiday traffic clears — and not one minute before.