It's hard to imagine how the state Department of Transportation can sugarcoat its plans to narrow the northbound side of I-95 in Waterford next week down to one lane, for a full 34 hours.

But they do.

No, it's not a plan to further lower Gov. Dannel Malloy's favorability poll ratings. Really, can those get lower?

The scheduled I-95 lane closing, starting Monday at 8 p.m., is actually part of an elaborate $5 million plan to replace the I-95 bridge over Oil Mill Road in Waterford.

Three other painful, 34-hour closing events are also scheduled, starting with another one on the northbound side Aug. 29, and two still unscheduled ones on the southbound side in October.

The sugarcoating for what promises to be monumental traffic events here in eastern Connecticut, as the sluggish summer traffic lingers into late August, is surprisingly perky.

Kevin Nursick, a spokesman for the DOT, likens the 34-hour closings to yanking off a Band-Aid. Poof. Fast. It's bad and painful and then it's over.

The relatively short closings, he says, should be compared to the alternative, long bridge replacement projects that could cause delays and disruptions for years.

The reason for this analogy is that the Oil Mill Road replacement project is part of a new pre-fab construction system the agency is using more often.

It's called Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC), which entails four scheduled "slides" in which half of the two bridges over the northbound and southbound lanes are replaced with pre-manufactured sections.

The surface traffic is disrupted during the slides, but all the rest of the work occurs below the traffic deck, before and after the lane closings.

The state has done small versions of this process and most recently did a larger ABC project that shut down lanes of I-84 over a weekend, Nursick said.

That project was successful, with minimal traffic disruption, he added.

I asked why this is happening when summer traffic is still at a peak, especially on I-95, with schools still on vacation.

He said it's the only way there would be time to complete the project before the closing of the weather window on road projects, usually around Nov. 1.

I wondered aloud if they couldn't have just waited a few more weeks, until Labor Day had passed, and he assured me they could not have.

The shutdown was also scheduled to center around Tuesday, which tends to be the slowest traffic day of the week there, he said.

I asked about detours.

None are planned. Indeed, town officials usually frown on having interstate traffic sent onto local roads, Nursick said. And in this case, a full closing of the highway will not occur.

There will be lots of police on call, Nursick said, including five state troopers. Police in East Lyme and Waterford will also be on alert and prepared to intervene, he added.

Still, the yanking of the Band-Aid is certainly going to cause some pain, and Nursick said backups on I-95 North could extend south all the way to the Baldwin Bridge over the Connecticut River.

I couldn't resist checking the weather forecast. It's not supposed to be especially hot, but there may be showers, heavy at times.

Nursick said the DOT is doing all it can to get the word out, since the more local drivers avoid the shutdowns the less severe the traffic tie-ups will be.

I said I would try to help.

Never mind major surgery. Most of us don't like ripping off Band-Aids either.

This is the opinion of David Collins

d.collins@theday.com