On I-40, the year-long siege begins

Some residents dread impending road work, others say they're already used to it

Come Monday (weather permitting), a paving contractor gets to work repairing Interstate 40 between the Orange County line and the Durham Freeway.

Now, reconstruction may seem to have been a permanent condition along that thoroughfare -- which at times bears more resemblance to a parking lot -- since it was opened almost 20 years ago.

And the terms of Lane Construction Corp.'s contract with the N.C. Department of Transportation do attempt to mitigate the project's inconvenience to the motoring public.

Nevertheless, said City of Durham Transportation Manager Mark Ahrendsen, "It will have adverse effects."

The 10.4-mile, $18.6-million fix-it was necessitated by a botched paving job carried out less than four years ago. The 50,000 tons of new concrete began breaking up in 2005.

Most nights and weekends between now and whenever the work is finished -- May 10, 2008, is the contract deadline -- some parts of some lanes on the highway are going to be closed.

No closing is allowed between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. weekdays, and some high-traffic weekend and holiday periods (college graduations, Fourth of July) are off limits; but any downtime on the Triangle's busiest road, especially during beach-weekend season, is bound to bring discomfort somewhere. Still, maybe because highway construction is practically a way of life in southern Durham, there does not seem to be a great deal of concern so far.

"I think it's one of those things that people know is coming," Nancy-Anne Potts of the Fairfield neighborhood said in an e-mail, "... but really won't start thinking about until it is here and the lanes are shut down and the traffic backs up and the back roads get jammed.

"Personally, I am dreading it."

If traffic backs up too far on I-40, even during construction hours, work is supposed to stop until the congestion is relieved, Ahrendsen said. NCDOT recommends that through traffic avoid the work zone, traveling instead by way of the Durham Freeway and I-85. Martin Luther King Parkway is another east-west alternative, running 5.5 miles between 15-501 at South Square and N.C. 55 near the Research Triangle Park.

Much of the way through Durham County, I-40 is paralleled by N.C. 54. Before I-40, it was the main route between Chapel Hill and Raleigh, so crowded and worn that a popular bumper sticker read, "Pray for me, I drive N.C. 54." Still a high-traffic route past apartment complexes and shopping centers, much of N.C. 54 is still two-laned -- but proximity to the interstate can bring the old times back.

"A lot of times when something happens on 40, everybody moves over to 54," said Chip Smith, who has operated Triangle Pharmacy/True Value Hardware on N.C. 54 for more than 30 years. "And when everybody moves over to 54, sometimes it gets bumper-to-bumper like it used to be."

With much of the upcoming construction going on at night, Smith said, traffic diversion should not be a big problem for his business. Similarly, Southpoint shopping center spokeswoman Courtney Phillips said her mall isn't worried.

"We feel comfortable that DOT has done everything it can," she said.

On another hand, Northgate Mall on Interstate 85 welcomes the road work down south.

"Absolutely it will affect our traffic," said marketing manager Paula Harris. "If there is re-routing of traffic to our corridor, there's definitely going to be more."

Besides those taking I-85, the Freeway and the King Parkway, which are built for lots of cars, some drivers may try blazing trails of their own through neighborhoods along the I-40 corridor. Woodcroft Parkway and Carpenter-Fletcher Road afford a multi-lane route between Hope Valley Road and Alston Avenue to I-40's north, while to the south bucolic Scott King Road and suburban Sedwick Road lead into RTP.

"We get so much [cut-through traffic] it doesn't do any good to complain," said Sharon Williamson, secretary of the Parkwood Association in south Durham's oldest subdivision. "We complained when they were talking about building Southpoint. ... We've gotten used to it."

Potts said she hopes the repaving won't have as bad an effect as the three-year widening I-40 got earlier this decade, but she worries about back-road intersections such as those at Stagecoach and Farrington roads and Herndon at Massey Chapel, which are already hazardously busy.

However, Fairfield resident Roger Fortman sees opportunity in changing conditions.

"Why don't people take a detour from the race track or parking lot, depending on the conditions at any given time?" he wrote in an e-mail to The News & Observer. "Most people will sit in traffic and complain, and complain more when they get home. What I like to do is get off the main road and take some of the side roads and streets. You never know what you might see, a little wildlife, some cattle grazing in a field, a yard sale coming up this weekend or even a lemonade stand. ... places to hike, fish, some interesting county stores and most of all ... I am not as stressed out from having to dodge, weave and brake for the other guy.

"My suggestion is that drivers should take the first right off the road and head in a general direction you want to go. Don't worry if it takes you longer, you would have been stuck on I-40 anyways."