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On time and on budget, NCDOT says it has finished a key $49 million project that opened up the Triangle's worst bottleneck by adding two lanes to a busy stretch of Interstate 40 in Cary and West Raleigh.
That's good news for commuters. The six-lane freeway has room for more traffic in both rush-hour directions -- westbound is the heaviest in the morning, and eastbound in the evening.
DOT has learned there's a wrong way to widen I-40, and a right way. This one looks like the right way.
The new layout also should reduce confusion and accidents at the hectic split between eastbound I-40 and Wade Avenue.
Now the three left lanes are more clearly marked than ever before as I-40, not only with overhead signs but also with bright red-and-blue interstate highway crest signs embedded in the pavement. The two right lanes (one lane is just an extension from the Harrison Avenue off ramp) are both marked for Wade Avenue.
How does it work for you? Has it cut a few minutes off your daily drive to work and home again?
Wake County officials had lobbied for eight lanes, but NCDOT said the high cost would force a long postponement of much needed improvements. So they agreed on six lanes, but they made provisions for expansion to eight lanes in the future.
New 12-foot paved shoulders are wide enough to accommodate added lanes in the future, and the new bridges and overpasses also were built wide enough for eight lanes.
The project work caused less traffic disruption and delay than DOT's I-40 widening in Durham County eight years ago, because of smarter construction techniques that reduced the need for closing highway lanes. And this time, DOT folks were smart enough not to use that badly engineered concrete that began crumbling almost as soon as it was laid on I-40 in Durham County. It had to be dug out and replaced.
On the Wake County I-40 project they used good (we hope) asphalt.
Bruce Siceloff reports on traffic and transportation. A News & Observer reporter, editor and blogger since 1976, he took over the
Comments
Siceloff just can't stop
Fri, 07/01/2011 - 22:55 — bendalSiceloff just can't stop finding fault with NCDOT, can he? First he talks about how the I-40 widening project came in on budget and on time, but then starts throwing in comments like "at least this time they didn't use bad concrete" and "they widened it right this time" and "hope they didn't use bad asphalt in Wake County". Even when he throws out a compliment, it's couched in a way to sound like a hidden complaint, like the way the EB I-40 lanes are signed now near Wade Avenue. "This time", he says, the lanes have overhead signs and embossed markings on the I-40 lanes, as if that kind of advancement existed back when I-40 was built decades ago and NCDOT just didn't use it for some reason.
I realize Siceloff is paid to find fault with whatever he's blogging about, but the unending blame game he plays has gotten old. For every "mistake" he can find with a highway project, there are dozens of projects that are built properly with no problems. Of course, blogging about projects with mistakes is a lot more interesting than talking about the ones that were built correctly; that's why Siceloff had to bring up completely unrelated problems to this project when he reported about it.
I agree with him
Sat, 07/02/2011 - 01:24 — Tommy69I am not defending him, I merely agree that the DOT has been a joke. If they (DOT) really wanted to ease problems with that area they would have installed a barrier between I-40 and the Wade Ave. exit to keep people from trying to race up to the split and to keep those exiting from Harrison from crossing over to try to merge onto I-40.