JONATHAN CREEK – Driving west along Interstate 40 in the Pigeon River Gorge, the cliffs adjacent to the road have been covered in a gray concrete and soil nails that look as if they were pressed into a pin cushion.
Crossing the Tennessee line from North Carolina, a vista of the gorge opens up as excavators and dump trucks bustle below the road as cars pass in a “sneak peek” Feb. 27 for media, ahead of the highway’s much anticipated March 1 reopening.
After months of emergency work in the deep-walled gorge of Haywood County, I-40 is reopening under “unusual conditions” after Tropical Storm Helene rendered more than 4 miles of the road impassable in September.
The road’s public reopening comes with a substantially decreased speed limit and motorists will only be able to travel in one lane both ways. Given damage from Helene, motorists return to the road will be a red letter day as a critical corridor through the mountains finally reopens. It will come with a couple of caveats.
With the one lane setup lasting approximately 12 miles from Exit 7 in North Carolina to Exit 447 in Tennessee, N.C. Department of Transportation Construction Engineer Nathan Tanner set expectations for those who are planning to travel the highway.
“Expect longer travel times, possible delays due to traffic backups and queuing,” Tanner said, describing the layout of the road as “precarious.”
The road will reopen with a 35-mph speed limit along the damaged section in the Pigeon River Gorge. The highway has been shifted to westbound lanes, where travelers will be tightly wedged together in a one-lane pattern going each direction. Lanes are separated by a 9-by-9-inch traffic light yellow concrete curb. Travelers headed east will have more width on the roadway, as NCDOT has established an additional travel lane for emergency services.
Only standard tractor trailers are allowed, as the stretch of highway does not currently support wide loads.
The impacted stretch of I-40 from Waterville on the North Carolina border to Harmon Den Road in Haywood County supports about 7,610 trucks daily and a total average daily traffic of over 26,000 vehicles, according to NCDOT Annual Average Daily Traffic statistics.
More:I-40 section collapsed by Helene in Pigeon Gorge to reopen; What to know
The highway will reopen “sometime in the morning” on March 1, Tanner said. While construction will continue, Tanner emphasized that the roadway was safe. Even on Feb. 27, dozens of workers bustled along the road as heavy trucks and machinery made it’s way between North Carolina and Tennessee.
“We would not open this road if we did not feel confident that it was safe for people to travel it, and we’re going to be working every day to get it repaired,” Tanner said.
Helene washed away 3 million cubic yards of dirt, rock and road material from I-40 in September. To bring the road back online, NCDOT signed an emergency contract with Wright Brothers Construction estimated to cost between $12 million and $15 million, Tanner said.
To stabilize the road, contractors installed a “soil-nail wall” that essentially pinned the slopes of the road against the side of the Pigeon River Gorge. The process involved drilling the soil nails into the rock below the road, placing a wire mesh over it and then spraying a concrete, known as “shotcrete,” on top of the nails. Around 90,000 square feet of grayish “soil-nail wall” was installed.
Contractors, led by NCDOT engineers like Tanner and assistant engineers like Isaac Jones, who said some chose to work on Christmas Day to help get the project across the line, describing the work as “physically hard.” When asked how many people worked on the road, Tanner didn’t have a number but jokingly said “very many.”
“It’s just unreal. Everybody came together to finish the common goal,” Jones said.
The team had also faced some setbacks, primarily in the form of an additional slope failure in December. If that slope failure had not happened, the team likely would have made their original goal of reopening by New Year’s Day, Jones said. He encouraged motorists to be prepared for unexpected delays.
“There’s no issue about the safeness of it, but just be prepared for delays,” Jones said. “Make sure you have a full tank of gas, because you just want to be prepared for anything.”
While the emergency repairs have reopened the road, I-40’s return to four lanes is likely to take between two to three years, Tanner said. NCDOT is currently working with Ames Construction as the contractor, RK&K as the designer and HNTB as the project manager to develop the long-term repairs, but the agency does not have accurate cost estimates, Tanner said.
In an early February visit, U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy suggested that the process to repair the road might be expedited if NCDOT is able to use “local rock,” which was later clarified to be river rock. NCDOT is currently working with the U.S. Forest Service to use deposited rock from the site near the Pigeon River.
“There is a possibility to utilize local deposited rock from the site to incorporate into causeway construction, which is a small piece of the overall construction of the permanent repair,” Tanner said.
The contract, which is a Construction Manager/General Contractor contract, “accelerates the timeline and reduces costs,” a Feb. 27 NCDOT news release said.
While I-40 has reopened, the narrow mountain pass may take longer than usual to travel. There are other ways to pass between Tennessee and North Carolina.
Tractor trailer drivers should note that while they will be allowed to travel on I-40, no alternate routes are available beyond Exit 20, despite some GPS devices and mobile phone apps suggesting they can take an exit in the gorge. Wide loads must utilize I-77 and I-81 to travel between the two states.
Knoxville News Sentinel reporter Allison Kiehl contributed to this report.
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Will Hofmann is the Growth and Development Reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. Got a tip? Email him at WHofmann@citizentimes.com. Consider supporting this type of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.
