Good News! Interstate 485 widening in South Meck to start in 2012

After years of delays, funding shortfalls, and contractor disputes, Charlotte commuters have received more good news when it comes to Interstate 485.

The much needed widening of six miles of highway in the Pineville/Ballantyne area in Southern Mecklenburg County will begin in June 2012 vs. the planned start date of October 2013. The widening will increase I-485 from four to six lanes from Interstate 77 (Exit 67) east to Johnston Road (Exit 61).

The project has an estimated cost o $77 million. It will add a new travel lane in each direction - these lanes will be built within the median. In addition, improvements to the Johnston Road interchange will be part of the project. A flyover ramp will be constructed connecting Northbound traffic to the "Inner" Westbound lanes of Interstate 485. The project should be completed by the fall of 2015.

Story Links:
Relief in sight for drivers on I-485 near Pineville ---WSOC-TV

Comments

Anonymous said…

All it does is push the traffic jam out to Johnston Rd. Let us know when they are serious (meaning: when they expand the southern 2-lane portion to 3-lanes). Whenever these DOT people create X lanes into X-1 lanes, they only really create right lane homos.

1:12 PM

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population. The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third

Gribblenation

Search This Blog