NCDOT plans East Wake Highway Improvements

Tired of the morning backups on US 64 West between Zebulon and Wendell in the morning? Or the long queue to get on and off the highway at Smithfield Road? The next decade may see some traffic relief in Eastern Wake County as NCDOT tries to keep up with the steady growth here. Two projects have scored significantly high in regards to statewide mobility as they prepare their 2020-2029 Statewide Transportation Improvement Program listing. Both projects concern the Future Interstate 87/US 64/264 freeway.

The first is the eventual widening to six lanes and upgrading of the US 64/264 Freeway from Rolesville Road (Exit 430) to the 64/264 split in Zebulon (Exit 436). The nearly seven mile project scored the highest of all NCDOT Division 5 (Durham, Franklin, Granville, Person, Vance, Wake and Warren Counties). The anticipated cost is just under $60 million and is programmed to begin in 2026. This project will also most likely extend the Interstate 87 designation to Zebulon.

Also scoring high is improvements to the Smithfield Road (Exit 425) interchange. This project scored fifth highest in the district and would see the diamond interchange converted into what is known as a Diverging Diamond Interchange or DDI. This interchange, which has drivers briefly on the wrong side of the road, has grown in popularity within the state with over one dozen currently in use or planned.

Below is a video from NCDOT that explains how a Diverging Diamond Interchange works.

This project is expected to cost nearly $7.5 million and is also planned for a 2026 construction date.

Please keep in mind that this is currently a preliminary score and construction date. NCDOT is taking public comment on over 2,100 highway projects as they prepare their construction plans for the next decade. The comment period runs from April 30 to June 8th.

Comments

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