State Road 23 was supposed to be closed for two weeks while Canadian National crews worked on a railroad crossing, but its taking longer. The work is part of a Major Moves project by INDOT to widen the road and reduce congestion.

This week it was announced the crossing would remain closed for another week, forcing drivers to continue making a five-mile detour around the construction.

Canadian National told NewsCenter 16 on Friday the railroad's part of the construction will be completed by Tuesday, not May 7 as originally believed.

While it's a hassle for drivers, it's caused a hardship for business along SR 23 that depend on drive-by traffic.

"Lunches seem to be the worst affected," said Philip Schreiber, owner of Between the Buns.

Schreiber said many lunch customers work on the opposite side of the track and the customers don't want to waste their lunch time driving the detour.

"If you go into the restaurant now, there's just not as many people in there as there used to be," said Schreiber, who noted dinner service is not doing as badly as lunch.

Across the street at Phillip's 66 lunch customers usually use the time to not just fill their stomachs, but also their gas tanks.

"I would have three workers behind the line and the cashiers running at the store side and all the gas pumps would be full at this time," said Flo Szymborski, who works at the gas station. "Our business is down 60 to 70 percent [since construction began]" said Szymborski.

Fewer customers means less staff are needed.

"We're still holding on to the employees that are coming in, but instead of working seven hours they're working like five hours," said Szymborski.

Business owners still doubt the work will be completed by Tuesday.

"We were told initially that it was going to be a week and then before everything got said and done it was going to be two weeks, but now they've added a third week and I'm really concerned that they're going to go to a fourth. We're in the middle of a recession and we can't afford to loose any business," said Schreiber.

At one point some business owners hoped construction workers would shop at the nearby businesses, but the economy hit the workers hard as well.

"A lot of them pack their own lunch, due to the economy, they have their own little coolers and their packing their lunch," said Szymborski.

Canadian National maintains its staffing levels during the construction were adequate and it needed more time, since this is a big project. They would not elaborate on any other causes for the delay.