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DOT has to do some testing to look for possible pavement problems on a section of the 540 Outer Loop -- so drivers will be squeezed into one lane each way at night for the next couple of weeks.
The lane closings will slow both east- and west -bound drivers on 540 between Triangle Town Boulevard and U.S. 64 Business (New Bern Avenue) in northeast Raleigh. The work, postponed today to start next week, will affect traffic only between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. The work is expected to be finished by mid-October.
A DOT engineer said radar waves will be used to determine whether steel connecting bars were buried deeply enough in the concrete when the road was paved in 2006. The bars connecting side-by-side travel lanes are supposed to be six inches deep. If they're too shallow, they could corrode and cause maintenance problems in the future.
The freeway opened to traffic in January 2007.
After an inspection in 2006 found a few bars poking through the surface of the concrete, DOT withheld final payment to the contractor and refused to accept the $67 million project as finished. That means the contractor will be responsible for any cost to fix the road now, or to cover future maintenance costs related to any problems with the steel.
Bruce Siceloff reports on traffic and transportation. A News & Observer reporter and editor since 1976, he took over the 
